The one thing that I hear the most from new real estate agents is that they don’t know any creative ideas to find their first seller client. It seems like finding buyer clients is relatively easy and that many agents are intimidated by having to find listing clients. Here are 10 solid ways to find listings!

So let’s start with…

How Do Sellers Pick A Listing Agent?

There is an old saying that “buyers buy houses and sellers buy marketing” that I think is really true! Your potential listing only wants two things, to sell fast for the most money possible. To do this, oftentimes, they think that a Realtor with a high profile can help!

But what if you don’t have any listings to show off yet?

You can do a brochure on Vistaprint that highlights your unique skills! I did this super early on in my practice. You can order just the minimum and having that wee little paper gave me the confidence to approach sellers!

Borrow listings from your office mates. There are definitely people around you who have listings who would love to have open houses, amazing pictures or free promotions. Borrow listings to use in your marketing that target the same types of sellers that you would like to work with long term!

Research, research, research. The last thing you want to do at a listing presentation is say over and over again, “I don’t know that, let me get back to you”. Instead you want to spend A LOT of time researching your neighborhoods, finding out about the market, knowing stats like DOM (days on market), absorption rate and percentage of list. Now, you don’t have to memorize any of these things, but you should have a sound foundation for what is going in your whole area and then the neighborhood of your first listing appointment.

What To Do With Leads

I KNOW, you want to get to the “how do I get my first listing” part of this post, but please, hear me out! Once you start doing some of the marketing that I am going to suggest in this post you will start to get leads for listings and the saddest thing in the world would be to let them all go to waste.

5 People A Day In Your Database

Your very first job as a real estate agent is to get 5 people a day into your database! This is what will help you have leads to followup down the line. I recommend MailChimp for this as they have a free version for when you are just getting started and loads of training for new users.

So who are these people you will be adding? That comes below!

Drip Marketing

Once you have people in your database, you want to start emailing them at least once a week. This does not have to be crazy awkward, you can just do a little message about a new listing that came on the market, a household tip or even a recipe if that is how you roll!

The biggest problem I see with people’s list is that they think they need to wait until they have “enough” people to message or that they are afraid of “bothering” them. You need to message them weekly right off the bat with something super interesting so they know that you are going to be actively talking to them.

Some people do this automatically by having a “drip marketing” campaign which is just a series of emails that goes out once your person signs up. DO NOT make this so hard that you never do it, it can be as simple as explaining parts of the real estate process to first time seller prospects or fun facts about your town or city.

How To Find Your First Listing Client

I don’t expect that all of these will appeal to you. Pick one or two to focus on and then get to work!

1. Friends & Family

It is really tempting to try and avoid “bothering” your friends and family when you get into real estate, but they can SO be source of some of your early listings. I added everyone I knew to my database after asking them if was okay to send them info from time to time… this is what I wrote to them to get their permission:

I am so excited to tell you that I passed my real estate test and got my license! I am trying to build up my list of people who might refer me clients and I would love to add your name to my list. Do you mind? I will only send you amazing info and would SOOOO appreciate your help!

Was it scary at first, maybe a wee bit, but no one was mean, some said no and many said yes.

This was a super fun way to get lots of people on my list all at once! I sent my husband into work with a form to fill out with anyone there who would let me email them and promised to send in some cool stuff. I got about 63 signups (first name, last name, email address).

Then I sent Johnny into work with a box of “popbys”. Little gifts that had a tag on them saying stupid things like “fangs for thinking of me when you sell your house” at Halloween and “here’s hopping you will work with me” at Easter. These were tiny little bags of goodies like candy, dollar store gizmos and even seeds or little handmade soaps.

The first time I sent him in he was MORTIFIED… until all the girls at work thought he was cool for bringing them presents and from then on he was fine with it all!

(I got 5 sides from his work, 3 listings which I worked and 2 buyers that I referred out for 25% commissions)

3. FSBOs & Expireds

I wasn’t much of a FSBO gal, didn’t want to argue about the validity of Realtors, but I did love expired listings! Those people have raised their hand and said they will work with a real estate agent, but were unsuccessful with the one they used the first time.

FSBOs

When I was an agent I had a pretty neat website and approached FSBOs about putting a “listing” on it, negotiating that they would pay me a buyers commission if I found a buyer. I would go over, interview them and take some pictures that I could upload.

First off, as a new agent this let me have “listings” on flyers and postcards I sent and second off, it was actually prospecting those FSBOs who came over. I listed two of them without much trouble, but didn’t enjoy the fairly acrimonious relationship they have with real estate agents.

EXPIREDS

When you are calling or mailing to expireds it is worth taking a few minutes to review their failed listing. See if you can see what went wrong. Could be that the pictures weren’t great, the description was horrible or that they were simply overpriced. We had a postcard campaign to send to expireds, but you could definitely drop them a personal note with your business card and ask for an appointment. Or, if you can find a phone number, give them a call and ask to come over and talk. Remember, lots of agents will be contacting them, having a bit of insight into THEIR home and why it didn’t sell will go a long way!

4. Website

Most agents are not super techy or internet oriented, but if you are then run with it! I had a site called “Come To Clearwater” that I used to prospect for buyer leads with relocation guides and where I put an enhanced version of my listings to impress the sellers.

Make sure that you have an email popup on your site and try to get sellers on your list by giving them free guides like, “10 Things To Do BEFORE You List Your Home To Sell” and “Why Overpricing Your Home Can Cost You In The End”.

Don’t fret if you get leads outside your area, refer those out for a 25% commission and make sure to followup with the referring agents.

You will need to get good at Real Estate SEO if you are going to be internet based!

5. Open Houses

I honestly believe that open houses are the easiest way to get listing leads. I always did mine during “Drive Time” – Monday through Thursday from 4-6. If someone stops at your open house after working all day and before getting dinner on the table they are doing some kind of real estate in the near future.

AND open houses are usually staffed by buyers agents who are mad that the “nosy neighbors” are coming by… what?!?! Those nosy neighbors are actually listing appointments. Talk up the house you are in, let them know you researched the neighborhood and offer to swing by and let them know what the market is doing in their neighborhood!

They will tell you that they are not selling for a couple of years, just let them know that there are probably things they should and shouldn’t do, and then cut that time in half in your lead book! They are selling in under a year with or without you! Keep in touch with these hot listing leads.

6. Facebook/Instagram Lives

I think that this is one of the most effective new marketing channels we have seen in some time. Going “Live” from an open house, while previewing a listing or even just highlighting an area is a way to generate interest from potential sellers (and buyers).

Functionally, popping open your phone once a day and basically saying what you are up to real estate-wise is a great way to get exposure for your business.

The reason it is so effective right now that Facebook and Instagram will notify your followers when you are live and promote recording a fair amount after it ends. This is much more effective than just posting randomly on social media.

7. YouTube Videos

This may be the future of marketing! People rarely have time to read a 3,000 word blog post or even a quick email message, but they are using YouTube to find out about goods and services in their area.

As a listing agent you can stake a claim to any neighborhood you like, simply by taking neighborhood videos of the gate, the amenities, sample houses, etc. You can also become a recognized expert in your town or area easily by taking people on “tour” videos and talking about what is interesting about your neighborhood!

It pays to learn a wee bit about YouTube SEO, but it is much less complicated than website SEO so is relatively easy to master.

8. Networking

Now that we have hit some “hip, new” marketing ideas, let’s go back old school. Sitting down, belly to belly, is going to be a great way to find listing leads. That said, you want to be very targeted in who you are networking with! Here are a few people that could help your listings get off the ground fast.

Realtors – Yep, many listing agents will not list properties under a certain amount or too far away from their office. Make friends with listing agents and let them know you will be happy to pay a 25% commission for any listing lead they send you (oh, and that you are super aggressive about following up!)

People who work for sellers – Think handymen, landscapers, painters, etc. who are the first to know when some one starts to “spruce” their house up to get ready to sell.

Connectors – For “normal” people, focus on the friendly ones! For example, I share all the time on social media and refer people often. My husband on the other hand NEVER refers anyone out so he wouldn’t be a great source to try to mine.

9. Referrals

Most people are not great at selling so you need to make sure to make it super easy for friends and family to refer you out. I recommend using business cards with your picture or logo on the front and then a “referred by” line on the back.

You can give 5 of them to your best clients and let them know when you get a referral from them you will send out a special gift (a $5-15 Starbucks card is fine). Don’t worry about whether you get a client or not, reward them every time they recommend someone to you!

This causes a nice feeling in them because they helped you and you thanked them. They will want to do that again and again!

Bonus points – if you are sending out a newsletter, make sure to put a “Referral Friends” section in there and call out everyone who sent you a referral that month. Peer pressure will kick in!

10. Door Knocking

I am not a huge “talk to random people” marketer, but door knocking in your farming neighborhood is a great idea! You can get to know potential clients, ask them if they would like monthly updates and generally make friends with the homeowners.

That said, I do think you should have something to give them. I feel the best is a sheet with a list of local trades people, the schools and emergency numbers AND your contact information in case they need a great real estate agent in the future!

Bonus points – Do it on colored paper and laminate it! Laminating something increases it’s value so much that they will probably not throw it away!

Finding Your First Real Estate Listing Wrapup

If you are just getting started as an agent or moving over to listings from buyers, finding listing clients can be intimidating. BUT, if you spend time every day prospecting for listings it really is attainable.

Through marketing to farms, networking with agents and open houses, I went from 0 listings to 52 in a little less than two years. It is totally possible and I know you can do it!

]]><p>The one thing that I hear the most from new real estate agents is that they don&#8217;t know any creative ideas to find their first seller client. It seems like finding buyer clients is relatively easy and that many agents are intimidated by having to find listing clients. Here are 10 solid ways to find...</p>
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com/2018/02/14/find-first-listing-client-real-estate-marketing/">10 Ways To Get Your First Listing Client!&#8230;. Real Estate Marketing</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com">Marketing Artfully</a>.</p>https://marketingartfully.com/2018/02/14/find-first-listing-client-real-estate-marketing/Should You Try To Rank In Google SEO For Your Etsy Store or Products?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarketingArtfully/~3/wGisNv5kTqI/etsy marketingetsy seogoogle seoTara JacobsenFri, 09 Feb 2018 08:34:54 PSThttps://marketingartfully.com/?p=14253
My Etsy peeps have been asking about how to get their Etsy products ranked in Google SEO search. This post breaks down ranking factors, things we can to increase our views and key ideas and tips to try today! Etsy SEO and Google SEO vary in pretty key ways so knowing what matters will help you stop wasting time on things that don’t matter!

What Do I Know About Google SEO and Etsy SEO?

I have been doing Google SEO since the dawn of time, okay for over 10 years and teach classes locally and online about Etsy SEO. I am pretty “in the know” and keep up regularly on best practices for both sites, updating my information when there are big changes.

My website ranks well for keywords in Google and my Etsy products rank in Etsy search.

Let’s jump right in….

What Are Google Search Ranking Factors?

Let’s get started right from the beginning. Google uses many different ranking factors for including an item in their web results. Here are a few that they have disclosed (there are many ranking factors in their algorithm that they do not disclose).

Domain Age – We have no control over this, Etsy’s domain was originally registered in 2004 according to betterwhois.com

Keyword In Domain Name – It looks like we have this because the URL dynamically adds words of the Title you use, but it is not true… the actual address of your listing ends at the numbers (ex. https://www.etsy.com/listing/467068929/). This is why we can change the Titles of our listings without messing anything up!

Domain Registration Length – How long the domain is registered for, right now Etsy has it’s domain registered through 2021 (again, something we can’t control)

Keyword In Title Tag – For this we have to look at the metadata to see how Etsy presents the title tags…

As we can see here, Etsy is pulling the first 53 characters of our Title.

Keyword In Description Tag – This used to count a lot more in Google search results, but now the main function of this to be your “salesman” on the SERP (search engine results page). Etsy shows the first 276 characters of our description as the description tag.

Content Length – There is some anecdotal info out there right now that “regular” SEO is improved by having longer posts that include more keywords naturally. We are also hearing rumblings that Etsy SEO is pulling keywords from the descriptions. (non confirmed)

Duplicate Content – Google really doesn’t like having duplicate content in their search engine. The more you can vary your titles and description content the better. (in English, don’t cut and paste the same description over an over again)

Image Optimization – This means naming your photos with the title of your post… for example my image name for this post would be google-seo-etsy-store.jpg. That would help Google realize that this is what my post is about. This has nothing to do with Etsy SEO. Etsy renames all of our pictures with a gibberish combination of letters and numbers.

Keyword Word Order – Matters to Google AND Etsy SEO. Exact matching a search will lead to a higher ranking in both. For example, if someone is searching for “red wool scarf”, products matching that exact order will rank better than if they have “wool scarf red” in their title.

Outbound Links – We can not make these in our listings so ignore. They are links to related content that would match our product.

Internal Links – There seems to be some value to linking your pages together internally. For example, you link to your category page, about us or home page from your listings (Etsy does make links to it’s own site “live”). Please remember that each page only has to much “Google Juice” so if you link to 1 page your are giving good value, if you are linking to 50 pages you are splitting your Google Juice into very small, unimportant amounts.

Page Category – This is one of Google’s ranking factors so if you are not using Categories in your shop yet, get them set up now.

Links from Outside Pages – This is actually why I was writing this post. I saw a bunch of Etsy peeps asking about building links to their products and pages. YES! This is a great way to increase your search ranking in Google, that said, it may not be the most effective thing to do with your Etsy SEO efforts (more about this later!)

There are literally hundreds of other things that factor into the rank your listing or store page gets, I just wanted to cover the main ones I see the most confusion about!

Ranking Your Etsy Products

Now let’s talk about showing up in Google search as an Ecommerce product listing page. Here are the search results for “writers planner”. The first thing that jumps out is that there are 9,630,000 results. This is a bit more than Etsy sellers are used to, but not crazy in the grand scheme of things.

There are three early results for Etsy. Two shopping results in the sponsored section and then the global Etsy search result for Writers Planner.

The first one goes to a product that doesn’t have “writers planner” in the title …
MARBLE PATTERN Lined NOTEBOOK | Writing Journal-Notebook for Writers Gift-Daily Planner-Large Notebook-The Notebook-Back To School-Boho

This leads me to believe that either Etsy or individual sellers are paying to promote these products and since we are talking about organic Etsy Google SEO today, we are going to skip those paid ads.

Etsy Dynamic Search Ranks In Google

Okay, I have some GREAT news for Etsy sellers! Etsy is really good at getting their search results page into Google SERPs!

As you can see above the search page for “writers planner” is the third result. This is the landing page that this link goes to…

That first listing is mine! Yay, it is a paid listing promotion through Etsy. Those two in the middle are “best sellers” – that is new… hmm wonder if it only shows up when it is a passthrough from Google search, who the hell knows!

My “real” Etsy listing for the writer’s planner is #15.

Ranking Your Etsy Store

There is one thought that you could name your Etsy store the same as your main search result, but as we have already seen, Google ranks listings not shops for product names.

So why would you try to rank for your store name? I can think of some reasons…

You do local events and want to refer them to your Etsy store

You are a speaker and reference your store in person and on podcasts

You are trying to get your products into retail

You are doing wholesale and want to show up in Google search if your customers check you out

In this case we are starting with the premise that they know your store name. For example when you search for “Paperly People”

As you can see, my “real” paperlpeople.com website comes up first and then my Etsy store. The nice thing about my store is that they have structured data in there to show the ratings and reviews which might draw someone to click (Etsy does that for us!)

Later on down we see YouTube, YouTube (Google owns YouTube), Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.

Honestly, it doesn’t take much to rank for your store name, and there are very few things that you can do other than make sure you link to your store from your social media. Your store description doesn’t even show up, just the generic Etsy description so this is a pretty non starter in my book.

What SHOULD You Do For Google and Etsy SEO Efforts?

Here are 5 things that I think you could do to rank in Google for your products! Practical, reasonable tips that are doable for any Etsy seller with a wee bit of technical skills.

I have split some of these into Vintage/OOAK and then handmade sellers because what you sell matters A LOT!

EVERYONE – 1. Rank Highly In Etsy Search – I know, you think this one is a cop out, but you can see that the thing that comes up in Google is the search results page for your keyword. There is nothing that will be more effective than spending your time ranking highly in Etsy search.

EVERYONE – 2. Get Google Rankings For Other Properties – We can get really focused on Etsy and not realize that there are so many other ways to get ranked on Google than straight to our stores or listings. For example, say we were looking for “anthropomorphic stickers” those are animals dressed up like people. One of my favorite sellers, Gianna from Pergamo Paper Goods, sells these!

Doing that search we find these results…

There are only 2,040 competing sites on Google for this search term. Things she could do to get her products noticed:

Make a video for YouTube showing the process for making her stickers or designing them … title it “anthropomorphic stickers”

Make a Pinterest board that has that phrase in the title and add it to a Tailwind Tribe(#promo link)

Start a Twitter account or Instagram or Facebook page (do not forget that many of Facebook’s things like groups are not indexed by Google)

Make a website and use that as the title of your site, or your categories or even just a page

Getting that phrase ranked in Google will be easy peasy since she competing with mostly ecommerce pages.

We get so caught up in Etsy SEO, do you think more people are searching on Etsy for stickers or on Google for stickers!

HANDMADE 3. Inbound Links – This is less of a Google thing and more of a marketing thing. If you are a handmade seller and have products that you sell consistently, it makes sense to build links to them. Put them on Pinterest, try and get Buzzfeed links, send free products to bloggers and influencers. Whatever it takes to get stable, steady links to those products is what your main focus should be.

VINTAGE/OOAK 4. Focus On Your Category Pages – Instead of trying to rank each listing separately try to get your category pages noticed. Here are some things to do!

Make a category… for example, I could do Vintage Doorstops

Link to that category page from every one of your doorstops listings

Make a graphic for that page and share it onto Pinterest

Share you doorstops category page on social media

I am really big on moving one level up because if you sell your “cow doorstop” eventually Etsy shows them a selection of all the current doorstops instead of sending them to your other shop listings. Not good!

VINTAGE/OOAK 5. Renew Old Listings When You Can – Say you think I am crazy and damn it, you ARE going to try and rank your individual listing pages, then PLEASE don’t make a new listing for every product. Make & publish a listing and then when that one sells, renew it with new pictures and description selling a similar item. That way you can have the benefit that the handmade sellers get from having long ranking listings!

Google EO For Etsy Sellers Wrapup

Well hopefully this helps at least a little. I know it is super tempting to hope that we can accomplish numerous things with our SEO effort, but frankly I find the best Google SEO for Etsy sellers who don’t wan to have their own website is to do great Etsy SEO!

There are many things that help with “real” Google SEO that are just not available to us on the Etsy platform and there is no sense fretting about it, just do what you can (have great titles and Etsy SEO) and list more!

]]><p>My Etsy peeps have been asking about how to get their Etsy products ranked in Google SEO search. This post breaks down ranking factors, things we can to increase our views and key ideas and tips to try today! Etsy SEO and Google SEO vary in pretty key ways so knowing what matters will help...</p>
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com/2018/02/09/try-rank-google-etsy-store-products/">Should You Try To Rank In Google SEO For Your Etsy Store or Products?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com">Marketing Artfully</a>.</p>https://marketingartfully.com/2018/02/09/try-rank-google-etsy-store-products/8 Reasons It Is Better To Be A Listing Agent Than Buyers Agenthttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarketingArtfully/~3/7BSvAm75AiM/Real Estate Marketinglisting agentsreal estate marketingseller agentsTara JacobsenTue, 06 Feb 2018 08:07:53 PSThttps://marketingartfully.com/?p=14216

Today I want to talk a wee bit about why you should strive to become a real estate listing agent rather than a buyers agent! I KNOW, it is much easier to get buyer leads than seller leads, but taking the time to focus on listing (or seller) leads will make a huge difference in your real estate practice.

Let’s jump right in…

8 Reasons It Is Better To Be A Listing Agent Than Buyers Agent

If you are on the fence about whether to put your real estate marketing efforts towards sellers or buyers, here are my top 8 tips for seller agent success!

1. They are contractually obligated to work with you!

This was a huge one for me! When I started my real estate career I thought I would be a buyers agent exclusively (this was before I ever had one in my car). I was good at the internet at a time when most agents didn’t even have their own sites and frankly, prospecting for buyers is like shooting fish in a barrel.

That said, buyers lost their luster fast for me the first time I schlepped a family around for two days, looking at houses and the next day they called all excited to tell me they had put an offer in on a FSBO townhouse without me. Sigh.

I know you can have them sign a buyers brokerage agreement and could try to get a commission if they buy through another agent or from a For Sale By Owner, but the thought of clawing and scratching a commission from people who didn’t value my services has very little appeal to me.

When you sign a listing agreement with a seller that is a legally binding document. They can’t just flake and say that they decided to go with another agent, you would need to release them and could still possibly get a referral bonus or other compensation for all the time you put in.

2. As a listing agent you control your time better.

This is a HUGE one! As a sellers agent, you set the timeline for your appointments, open houses, inspections and showings. Most of a buyer’s agent day is spent on nights and weekends when their clients have the time to look, but sellers agents can set a more normal schedule.

For example, I would do listing appointments anytime during business hours 9-4 weekdays and then occasional Saturdays if they just couldn’t make it. But look at it this way, if they have to visit their accountant or lawyer, they find the time during the week so why not for their real estate professional.

Most of this depends on your feelings of professionalism and setting boundaries for your potential clients.

Set a schedule for your time and then stick to it to the best of your abilities!

3. Every listings almost guarantees two buyer sales.

This is a fun one! Since time has begun (okay, mostly through years long stats collected) it has been found that for each listing you will get two buyer sales. This happens because you get sign calls or internet leads on your listing and then you do discovery to find out what they are looking for and convert them from a random stranger to a buyer you can work with or refer out to another agent in your office.

Don’t be that agent that says just the details about your listing and then hangs up, instead discover what it was about your listing that appealed to them and then try to get them into an exclusive buyers relationship with you or your team!

If you are listing your first house, it can feel like this could not possibly be you… how can you have experience that will help them succeed? Well in my case I had marketing experience that I brought to real estate. Maybe you have great customer service skills or are willing to work harder than anyone else to sell their home because it is your first listing!

Once you have a few sales under your belt you are an expert in how to properly price a home for sale, telling them about condition and location and helping them to be good listers.

If you are just starting out make sure to attend every brokers ope and open house you can find. Figure out if the pricing and condition match, what neighborhood houses usually have in the way of amenities and see what the competition is doing to market those homes.

Before you even go on your first listing appointment you can be highly educated in your local market and be ready to answer questions your potential sellers might have!

5. You can be a farmer.

I am a HUGE proponent of marketing to a farm! This is where you pick a neighborhood and then start a marketing campaign to get those homeowners to notice you. I had three farms, a high turnover/medium priced one, a tiny little one that I could bombard regularly and then a more up-scale on to get higher priced listings.

The cool thing about farming is that you just pick something you like. Could be you like the glamor of selling high end, waterfront houses. Or you might be a farm girl who likes selling ranches. Or maybe you have a big family and love working with clients who need to get at least a 5 bedroom house on the buyers side.

Whatever you like can be your future farm and you control what kinds of clients you serve.

6. Open houses won’t suck anymore!

As a new agent one of the easiest ways to get clients is at open houses. That said, most new agents ignore the “nosy neighbors” and focus on the “real buyers” that walk in the door. I challenge you to flip this around and focus solely on those neighbors (who own houses in the area and who might be thinking about selling!!)

Try to make an appointment with them to do a walkthrough of their home and finding out when they are thinking about selling (cut that number in half when scheduling your followup calls!)

Put them in a database and call, email or Facebook friend them to get a relationship going so that when they are ready to list they pick you as their agent because they know, like and trust you.

7. Your efforts matter the most.

When you are working with buyers, you really are at the mercy of everyone around you. You have to trust your buyers to stick with you, you have to do showings and appointments on other people’s timelines and you can’t really control if your buyers want to make lowball, unrealistic offers time and time again.

As a sellers agent, you can be assured that all of your efforts will go directly to selling that home. You may be doing open houses, attending pitch sessions to let other agents know about your listing, doing Facebook live walkthroughs and Instagramming cute pictures of the house. Your efforts will directly impact how fast that home can sell with your enthusiastic promotion.

Now, that is not to say that you make someone buy an overpriced listing so make sure to try and get it priced right at the start. But if you are putting in a good effort, your sellers will appreciate you and you can feel good about your business.

8. No listing emergencies.

I love marketing because there are even fewer “Marketing Emergencies” than there are “Listing Emergencies” but either way, there is much less stress and pressure than when you are working with buyers. You don’t have to spend time fretting about financing, whether they will buy a washer 2 days before closing, or jumping every time the phone rings to show another random house to someone who might or might not buy.

I can remember the first time I got one of those “amazing” buyer calls on a Sunday afternoon. This buyer was in from out of town and had to see 2-3 qualified listings that afternoon. He was looking to spend in the high 6 figure range and so of course I jumped right on it, looking up listings and calling agents to see if we could get showings on short notice. A couple of hours later I called him back to let him know the good news and he said that he changed his mind and was going to look the next time he came in town.

Okay, totally my bad for not qualifying my buyer (and I never did that again) but I can’t recall ever having a seller call me and say that I would lose their listing if I didn’t come over that afternoon to list their house.

Being a listing agent is a much more structured, business-like profession than when you are working with buyers!

Why It Is Better To Be A Listing Agent Than Buyers Agent Wrapup

Now that you have gotten all the way down here, hopefully you have a better idea of why you would choose to market yourself as a listing agent rather than a buyers agent. Being a listing agent is a much easier job and has huge upsides that are just not present when you are chasing buyers around town.

]]><p>Today I want to talk a wee bit about why you should strive to become a real estate listing agent rather than a buyers agent! I KNOW, it is much easier to get buyer leads than seller leads, but taking the time to focus on listing (or seller) leads will make a huge difference in...</p>
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com/2018/02/06/better-listing-agent-buyers-agent/">8 Reasons It Is Better To Be A Listing Agent Than Buyers Agent</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com">Marketing Artfully</a>.</p>https://marketingartfully.com/2018/02/06/better-listing-agent-buyers-agent/Etsy Shipping Tips – How To Reduce Your Shipping Costshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarketingArtfully/~3/toUnjeE_NJ8/etsy marketingetsy sellersetsy shippingTara JacobsenWed, 31 Jan 2018 08:53:59 PSThttps://marketingartfully.com/?p=14191

Calculating shipping costs as a part of your Etsy business could lead to better profits or a barren store with few viewers and even fewer sales.

Why Do Shipping Costs Matter To Etsy Buyers and Sellers?

Let’s just jump right in and talk about why shipping costs matter!

If you are a seller whose costs are higher than average, then shoppers may abandon your product when they see the cost to ship it. Conversely, you may decide to stop selling something because it is prohibitively expensive to ship and reduces your profit margins!

As a buyer, you may only buy if free shipping is offered, but at the very least want to make sure you aren’t getting ripped off by high shipping costs!

Who Pays For Shipping?

So who should pay for shipping? In my store I let Etsy set the calculated price based on the weight of my items and the dimensions of the box. This makes sense because I sell one of a kind items that vary in size and weight.

They Pay For Shipping

There is a cost for shipping and many sellers feel that this should be paid all, or in part, by the buyer. I tend to agree, especially on a site like Etsy where you are purchasing one-of-a-kind items that handmade or vintage.

Amazon has tried to make free shipping a standard, reducing margins on their sellers, but margins are oftentimes so slim on handmade that eating the cost of shipping would be adding insult to injury.

You Pay For Shipping / Free Shipping

A segment of the population will not buy anything that doesn’t include free shipping (my mother-in-law). That said, shipping is not free and you will have to include the cost of it when calculating your profits.

It will be important to judge what the sale price of your items are comparable to other sellers if you are trying to “hide” the cost of shipping by raising your prices.

BONUS… all that said, Etsy has a filter in search for free shipping so you might get more viewers and sales if you offer free shipping.

BUMMER… if you have to issue a refund and your shipping is included, there is no really elegant way to refund your item minus shipping charges. You will also be charged final value fees on the built in shipping costs raising your shop costs slightly.

Spitting The Difference

One thing that could work is to reduce your shipping costs a bit and pay part of them if you think that you fees are too high. This could help get your prices in line, especially if you are an overseas seller.

Etsy Shipping Classes

The Priority Mail Myth and Benefit

Let’s get this one out of the way right here at the start. I hear a lot of new sellers thinking that they need to ship everything Priority Mail to get tracking. If you are using Etsy shipping labels, all of your packages are tracked, even if you are using first class or media mail.

What Priority Mail does provide is free insurance against damage or loss. You can buy additional insurance when printing your labels if need be.

Shipping First Class With Stamps

One thing that you should avoid is mailing your items first class with stamps or through the post office. I totally understand that the cost of shipping through Etsy can seem prohibitive if you are just sending a paper label or some stickers that you could throw in an envelope for a few cents.

But this way does not give you any tracking or protections because you can’t prove you mailed anything. Should it get lost, or the buyer leave you a bad review that they never got it, you have no way to prove that it shipped.

Fixed Price Shipping

If you are selling like sized and weight items, it is possible to calculate a standard shipping price. This can reduce costs for your buyer or yourself, but comes with it’s own problems.

If it weighs more than a pound, shipping costs will vary by the distance it has to travel. Additionally, each time the post office raises its prices you will have to go in and change every listing.

International Shipping

I am going to talk more about international shipping later, but just know that any mistakes you make in your efforts to reduce shipping costs will be compounded if you ship internationally!

Reduce Shipping Costs

If you are looking for a cheaper way to ship, you might want to consider educating yourself on Parcel Select, Media Mail, Priority Mail padded envelopes, Regional Rates and Flat Rate shipping!

Parcel Select – Over One Pound

Let’s start with why you should choose Parcel Select as one of the options for shipping when setting up your listings!

I have found that if I do not include Parcel Select as one of the options for shipping then Etsy tends to calculate the shipping cost at the highest cost of Priority that it can.

This is what the options that your buyer gets when they choose shipping looks like.

As you can see, the cost to ship via media mail is much less, but only available for those limited kinds of item.

Padded Flat Rate Envelopes

The two lowest cost Priority shipping rates are for the Small Flat Rate Box and the Padded Flat Rate Envelopes.

If you can get your item to fit into a padded envelope you can save a lot of cost of your shipping! I often use a box inside of a padded envelope to protect delicate items. A 4″X4″X6″ fits easily and a a 9″X6″X3″ fits with just a wee bit of cutting down.

If you have an item that will fit into a padded envelope you could set fixed price shipping for both US and International shipping, knowing that the price would be same each and every time.

Flat Rate Shipping

If you ship heavy items frequently then Flat Rate Shipping boxes are the way to go. They are free to order from the the USPS and will standardize the cost of sending packages.

There are three sizes, Small, Medium and Large, increasing in price with the size selected.

There is no easy way to pick Flat Rate Priority as an option for Etsy shipping so if you know you are going to use them, you might want to choose fixed price shipping and then just put the price of the fixed rate box.

Note: When I started I thought that the only kind of Priority shipping was flat rate. Come to find out you can use any box to ship priority so don’t limit yourself to just these flat rate boxes if you can lower shipping costs by using your own!

Regional Rates

Last but not least for reducing your shipping costs on heavier items is to use Regional A and Regional B shipping boxes. These are stupendous for shipping heavy items to buyers that live close to your home!

For example, I had a super heavy item that fit into a Regional A box that was shipping inside my state (Florida) that would normally cost about $18 to ship Priority, but in the Regional box was less than $12.

Figuring these out is always a wee bit hard, but totally worth your time. If you have a small to medium sized item that can fit into one of those boxes AND you are not shipping it across the country, it is definitely worth checking to see if you can lower the price to ship!

Why You Shouldn’t Worry About Shipping Costs

One last thing, actually the reason that I wrote this whole long post for you so that maybe you would listen to this part too!

Please stop worrying so much about the cost of shipping.

Some of the items I sell are going overseas and the buyer pays more for shipping than the item costs.

I have talked to some sellers who are hesitant to even open their stores for fear that the shipping will be so high that no one will buy their items. If you have an amazing product that is unique and of a good quality then shipping costs become less of an issue!

Don’t rely on your concept of what costs “too much” to ship. Most Etsy sellers I know are a frugal bunch and would be put off by paying a high shipping charge but if you target high priced buyer, you will be fine in the long run!

]]><p>Calculating shipping costs as a part of your Etsy business could lead to better profits or a barren store with few viewers and even fewer sales. Why Do Shipping Costs Matter To Etsy Buyers and Sellers? Let&#8217;s just jump right in and talk about why shipping costs matter! If you are a seller whose costs...</p>
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com/2018/01/31/etsy-shipping-tips-reduce-shipping-costs/">Etsy Shipping Tips &#8211; How To Reduce Your Shipping Costs</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com">Marketing Artfully</a>.</p>https://marketingartfully.com/2018/01/31/etsy-shipping-tips-reduce-shipping-costs/Popular Social Media Content Ideas (For Facebook & Everywhere Else)http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarketingArtfully/~3/jX-4kqQe9dA/Small Business Marketingsocial mediafacebookTara JacobsenFri, 19 Jan 2018 10:07:27 PSThttps://marketingartfully.com/?p=14159

Okay, we have all heard, the sky is falling and Facebook hates our marketing content! They have functionally said that they are switching the platform over to a pay for play model. But that doesn’t mean we can’t post things that reach and appeal to our customers social media, we are just going to have to be more creative in our ideas!

Who Is Your Customer Matters More

I have been a huge proponent of niching down in the past, but now I am even more adamant about it!

If Facebook will only show posts that people respond to, we HAVE to know what our customers like.

For example, I was talking with a gal who sells Cosmetic Acupuncture the other day. She is like most people, she said her customers are in the 45-65 age range, but her products and services could help 25 year olds to 65 year olds.

Whoa nellie!

First off, I know for a fact that getting 25 year olds to buy skin care products is hard, they have great skin already because of their age. So she would be wasting some love on a group that is less likely to buy anyways.

Second off, it is almost impossible to find interesting things that people who are young AND older will like!

But what if your customers are men and women, young and old, as they are for dog rescues like my pals at Marley’s Mutts?

Then you need to lean into something that binds them all together, love of dogs and animals!

Lean in to your audience’s passions and ignore everything else!

Preaching To The Choir

There is a saying where I come from, that you are “preaching to the choir”. Functionally that means that the people who love you or your industry already are your best prospects.

Many times we think that we have to convince people to notice our posts, but Facebook and the other networks already know who is out there that would like your posts.

For example Facebook knows which of my friends like posts about Giant Sloths… Mike and Cindy and Jennie and Donna. Sloth lovers!

But how does that help my BUSINESS posts?

On your profile, if you generally post interesting content that your friends like, then Facebook will ASSUME your business related posts might be interesting too!

I have a feeling that our profiles are going to become more and more important! Don’t forget people can “follow” your profile, even if you have hit your friend limit.

Niching Down Your Posts To Increase Engagement

One of the things that Facebook is focusing on is Engagement, meaning if you post it to your 5,000 friends and they show 20 and no one likes it or comments, then they are going to stop showing it to everyone.

But what if you only show it to certain friends, the ones that like those kind of things? Here is where lists come into play.

I have a “realtors” list. I built it up over time and now have quite a few agents on that list!

When I post something “Realtor-y” that the rest of my peeps would not appreciate, I can just post it to my agent friends…

If you don’t have a list but want to do local people, Facebook automatically makes some other lists for you, check them out the next time you post!

A sneaky tip…. post it to you list and get some good engagement and THEN change the setting to public so everyone can see it! Don’t know if this will work, but can’t hurt to mess around a bit if you are trying to market on Facebook.

What To Post On Facebook

So if you are selling things, how do you make engaging content that people will like?

Consumer Post

Here is a good post for a makeup company… as a 51 year old, I got this in my feed and was interested enough to click through since it applied just to me!

Note that it is a promoted post … paying to promote is going to be a thing, but she could have gotten some organic traffic too! That said, please note she was promoting makeup tips NOT a blatant ad to sell makeup.

Biz Post

I can hear you now, but what if you don’t sell consumer goods… what the heck can you share that will be popular?

I am super impressed by this post on Google Plus from Phoenix Electricians Today. They posted a beautiful quote picture that still highlighted their company.

THIS is the kind of thing that merges “popular/sharable” with business.

Age Related Post

One of the things that I have seen doing well on Facebook is targeting your posts to a certain Customer Demographic. For example, this video from Culligan Water (maybe the most boring thing to sell in the world) plays on a love for the movie The Princess Bride.

If you look up “when was the The Princess Bride” released, it was 1987. That is when I was about 20 years old and it is TOTALLY in my wheelhouse.

What you want to do is find out which movies, games, and songs were released when your target customer was in their early to mid 20’s (when most of our tastes were set).

So if your customer is in her late 30’s right now, you would take this year’s date and subtract about 18 years, so we would looking at about 2000. Besides Y2K, the 2000’s were known for…

Source Billboard music (I did a search on Google for “what music was popular in 2000”)

Oh there she is, Miss Brittany Spears! So if you were selling something to this age group you could post a video from YouTube of “Oops I Did It Again” and then have words in you post that match that theme. Like “Oops I did it again, I forgot to tell you about this great course I launched last week that will help you become an influencer like the fabulous Brittany Spears!”

Figuring out how to pair your message with a popular post type can be a challenge but worth it if Facebook chooses to spread your message!

You Can’t Really “Sell” On Facebook Organic

If you are going to focus your marketing efforts on Facebook organic, you are going to have to understand that a pure, “buy my stuff” play will probably not work the best.

Contest Post

You can get some traction with things like a contest post, but note that they say “link in profile” instead of putting the link in the actual Facebook post. This is so that Facebook’s algorithm categorizes it as a “picture post” rather than a “link out” post.

Facebook doesn’t like you to direct people away from Facebook so anytime you can avoid that, you will get better engagement.

Meme Posts

There is a reason people love “meme” posts, they get a lot of engagement! This is a super clever way to pair a fun product sale with a meme.

It would be great for my pal Kirsten who has a Pure Romance business.

It’s a way to get a share because of the “funny factor” and would for sure include a link to purchase on of her products.

Would I use this particular method myself to post on my timeline? Nope! My customers are business types who could find it offensive.

But for sure the people who love her and support her business endeavors would think it was cute and fun.

Copy What Works

I love seeing Facebook content producers who are innovative and creative! The Lighter Side of Real Estate page is great at creating fun posts that will appeal to their target market, real estate agents.

Now this might seem funny to you unless you are a real estate agent, but it really is a hoot if you are their customer type!

All they did was add some words to an old Saturday Night Live video clip. You could do this for any business… for example…

Selling your dryer vent cleaning services – What do you mean you have NEVER cleaned your dryer vent… call us today!

Selling investment advice – What do you mean you don’t have a 401K…call me today!

Selling weight loss coaching – When your weight loss client tries to explain how eating a full pizza okay because she was at the gym today!

]]><p>Okay, we have all heard, the sky is falling and Facebook hates our marketing content! They have functionally said that they are switching the platform over to a pay for play model. But that doesn&#8217;t mean we can&#8217;t post things that reach and appeal to our customers social media, we are just going to have...</p>
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com/2018/01/19/popular-social-media-content-ideas/">Popular Social Media Content Ideas (For Facebook &#038; Everywhere Else)</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com">Marketing Artfully</a>.</p>https://marketingartfully.com/2018/01/19/popular-social-media-content-ideas/You Need To Pick A Micro Niche (Or Two!)http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarketingArtfully/~3/PnwUHI8frh8/Small Business Marketingnicheniche marketingTara JacobsenThu, 28 Dec 2017 06:58:35 PSThttps://marketingartfully.com/?p=13876

If you are like most entrepreneurs you probably think that picking any kind of niche is like sitting in a tiny little box all by yourself! No fun and nothing to do… but what if I told you that picking a niche is like making a HUGE box that is full of presents?

Picking A Plain Niche

So first off, lets talk about the elephant in the room! Most entrepreneurs don’t want to pick a regular niche let alone a micro niche.

I was like that for years. I wanted to be able to serve anyone, men & women, small business owners & manufacturers, big businesses & tiny little moms and pops.

But that is not cool! Having specialized knowledge and offerings for all those different kinds of people is a recipe for disaster. By picking no one in particular, I wound up serving almost no one in reality.

My message was scattered and no one could understand what I was trying to do or sell.

Picking A Micro Niche

So let’s look at my niche for Real Estate Agents…. it could be every real estate agent in the world, but I tend to focus all my marketing efforts on women so it is really…

> Women Real Estate Agents

And then I didn’t really work with home buyers, I worked with the people who wanted to list their homes to sell so lets make that…

> Women Real Estate Agents Who List Homes

And real estate is very different around the world so it is really…

> Marketing For American Women Real Estate Agents Who List Homes

THAT is my micro niche!

I can do that with my Etsy list…

Marketing For Etsy Sellers > Who Are Women > Who Sell Vintage Only

And with my Authors…

Marketing For Women Authors Who Write Non Fiction

To Do: You pick a Micro Niche!

Okay now you do it… pick a niche and then drill down at least 2 if not three levels!

Making Products For Your Niche

Okay, now that you have a micro niche life gets super easy!

It is really easy for me to think of things to make my niches…

SEO for Listing Real Estate Agents

Time Management for Vintage Etsy Sellers

Pinterest for Non Fiction Authors

If you haven’t noticed by now, most people are super busy. They are drowning in messages and tweets and voicemails. There are even memes about “ain’t nobody got time for that”!

With that in mind, most of us are willing to pay extra for something that we “know” will work because it is made for just our problem.

So my pal Kirsten can make products like “Vegan Meal Plans For Women Athletes In Their 40s Who Compete In Triathlons”

And my buddy Pat can make a product for “Women Business Owners Who Are Getting Ready To Turn 64” (the year they have to start thinking about Medicare)

It is crazy how niche we can get now that the internet lets us find the exact people who are looking for us!

To Do: Think of 10 Products You Could Make For Your Micro Niche

If you are selling information products or books that can be easy, if you are selling real products think about how to explain them to to your niche group.

Let’s say you “sell” mortgages. You could set up an Ebook to talk to first time homebuyers and then have a “program” that is just for first timers. The actual product is not different, just how you present the offer.

Setting Up A Sales Funnel For Your Niche

So now you have a product or two that you are thinking of for your micro niche. How do you sell it to them?

Discover You – So first you need to have a way for them to find you. I write blog posts or make videos that they can find on the internet. You could do a postcard or an in person speaking event. Somehow you have to get them to notice you!

Get Them On Your List – Next you need to start to make a list. You can use an online tool like ClickFunnels or Constant Contact. You can use an excel sheet or even a piece of paper. Just start collecting names and email addresses or phone numbers.

Tiny Offer – The next thing you want to do is have a micro commitment like a little $7 ebook or a free consult. This is a great way to introduce yourself to them and show them you are an expert in your topic.

Sell Them Your Stuff – By this time you will want to start selling them your real products or services!

Claiming Your Niche Space

Once you are the “authority” in your niche you have all kinds of great options! You can be THE person everyone refers people to.

You can be confident that you know more than most people about your topic and that you can help them with their needs.

You can approach them to speak at their events, talk on their podcast or write a guest blog post!

And don’t forget, you can have more than one micro niche! Mine match the things that I do so I just change them out depending on who I am talking to. If I get invited to speak on an Etsy hangout, I tailor all my answers to things ecommerce sellers would be interested in.

]]><p>If you are like most entrepreneurs you probably think that picking any kind of niche is like sitting in a tiny little box all by yourself! No fun and nothing to do&#8230; but what if I told you that picking a niche is like making a HUGE box that is full of presents? Picking A...</p>
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As we come up on the end of the year it is really easy to think that we can do it all… spend time with our family, work as hard as usual on our business and have the “perfect” holidays.

But we can’t. For reals.

There is a finite amount of time we all have and trying to do it “all” is just a lesson in doing everything half badly.

So with this in mind, can I suggest something? Don’t try to be half productive, work when you work and don’t work the rest of the time.

Shockingly easy right? And super hard to implement!

As entrepreneurs, work tends to creep into our very souls. We want to do just one more little thing, or check one more post or do just a wee bit more.

That feeling of “having” to do something is what makes work work. The gasp in the pit of your stomach when you realize your forgot something that will ruin EVERYTHING. The nagging thought that you are letting everyone down (including yourself).

Being off work means giving yourself the grace to just say no to all these niggling doubts and worries.

How To Stop Working

It seems like it should be easy to stop working, but really it is not. Where does it end when you are still in your work environment (your home) but somehow magically you are supposed to be able to turn everything off and start just living a civilian life of leisure.

Here are some ideas that might help!

Hard Start Stop Time/Date

This is what I do! I set a day/time that I am going to stop working. This year I am stopping after this blog post is done and not starting again until the day after Christmas. Gasp!

That is three and half whole days of being “off”. Just like normal people who have jobs.

They get vacation and live for the weekends where they are footloose and fancy free.

But what constitutes “work” for me? I LOVE marketing and much of it is actually play to me instead of something I have to do. So this is a pretty good list of my dos and don’ts for being on vacation… extrapolate it for your work!

I GET TO watch some videos about marketing that I have been too busy to watch

I GET TO do Instagram because I find it fun and it can be done off and on

I GET TO take pictures because that is a new passion

I DON’T HAVE TO answer emails (they will pile up but that is okay!)

I DON’T HAVE TO respond to clients (they should understand that it is vacation time and if they don’t they will live though it!)

I DON’T HAVE TO do anything that even feels remotely like an obligation

I GET TO dink around with anything that feels fun and frivolous

I GET TO spend huge amounts of time hanging out with friends and family

If you are having a hard time disconnecting, pick three things you like to do and focus any random work anxiety on doing those things!

Scheduled Breaks From Work

I am super lucky that I can draw this line in the sand and turn work off, but what if you can’t? What if you HAVE to work over the holidays?

Then put really strong fences around work!

Work from 9AM-11AM only. Check your emails and Facebook only at certain designated times.

REALLY see if you have accomplish something right then or if you can let someone know it is on your calendar for next week. I do this throughout the year and everyone is happy to know that I have seen their request and will get to it at a specific time in the future!

Be rigorous in knowing what is urgent AND important and put everything else off until after the holiday.

Scheduled Breaks From Vacation

Okay, this is a wee bit like the opposite of the previous one but feels more fun!

Instead of thinking about taking breaks from work, think about taking breaks from your vacation.

Set aside an hour here or there to pop back into work. Set a timer and get done whatever you need to do and then get the heck back out!

Take A Day Off

Okay, unless you are a brain surgeon or an emergency room vet (and very few of those read my blog) your work is probably not life saving. You CAN take a day off!

And don’t assume that it has to be “the” day. I am taking off around Christmas because I have three kids and I WANT to be available to be with them. I have more mature parents who won’t be around forever and I WANT to be with them.

But what if you are single? Or out of town? Then DIVE into work on the day, glory in the fact that you can work completely uninterrupted!

I did this for years before I was married and then while I was married before we had kids.

Offer to work for people who would like to take the time off or volunteer where you can help.

AND THEN… take a whole day off for yourself. Do a spa day or an entire day doing “research” at a museum or go to a conference and really be in that moment.

Don’t Be Half Productive Wrapup

I hope this has helped a wee bit. I spent years trying to be half work – half mom and it didn’t work at all. Everyone felt left out and I felt totally stressed.

]]><p>As we come up on the end of the year it is really easy to think that we can do it all&#8230; spend time with our family, work as hard as usual on our business and have the &#8220;perfect&#8221; holidays. But we can&#8217;t. For reals. There is a finite amount of time we all have...</p>
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/22/work-or-dont-work-dont-try-to-be-half-productive/">Work Or Don&#8217;t Work&#8230; Don&#8217;t Try To Be Half Productive</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com">Marketing Artfully</a>.</p>https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/22/work-or-dont-work-dont-try-to-be-half-productive/My #1 Email Marketing Hack For A Multi-Niche Website | Entrepreneur Email Marketinghttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarketingArtfully/~3/FEnSiT_ZgmA/email newslettersSmall Business Marketingemail marketingentrepreneur marketingTara JacobsenWed, 20 Dec 2017 08:07:25 PSThttps://marketingartfully.com/?p=13851

If you are freaking out about your entrepreneur email marketing efforts because you don’t want to bombard your readers, this post is for you! Tips & Ideas for how to have a great email marketing plan!

I am an entrepreneur with a fair number of interests (aren’t most of us?) And with that in mind I have a multi-niche website that serves real estate agents, writers, and Etsy sellers… pretty diverse group right?

Yup… they don’t always like the same things!

My real estate agents are not interested in taking product pictures and my authors are not all that interested in Instagram…

BUT they are all interested in one thing… things that will help JUST THEM!

For years I was frustrated by the fact that real estate agents wanted to know the latest “realtor marketing” tips. Not marketing-marketing tips but just tips that pertained to them.

Shhhh this is a big secret… there are no “writer marketing tips” or “etsy marketing tips”… there is only marketing, Instagram, photos, video, emails, etc.

But that having been said, there is something super compelling about knowing that the info you are reading or watching is tailored just for you. All the examples will make sense immediately and you will not have to waste time figuring out what heck you are supposed to do!

And this doesn’t just work for marketing peeps, whoa no!

Think about it, if you were a single mom of 4 kids and a financial consultant was trying to help you with an email series, which would you rather read?

5 Tips To Help You Have A Better Retirement

How This Single Mother Made A Safe Home For Her Kinds AND Saved For Her Future

There is NO question that a single busy mother would be so much more inclined to read the second one and send that first one right to the trash or spam folder.

Segregating Your Email List

So the first thing that you want to do is segregate your email list. I use Infusionsoft which is a HUGE email marketing software but there are solutions like Constant Contact and Drip that let you put people on different “lists” according to the tags or categories you assign them. (#promo)

For example, my pal Rebekah who is a fitness guru for women could have lists like:

needs to lose over 30 pounds

gym rats

skinny but weak

The verbiage she uses in emails that she sends out to these three groups should be totally different! For overweight women she will want to talk about how they get started, shave off pounds and lose weight. For gym rats she might talk about exercise plans in detail and then offer them workout routines. Two different types of readers!

Autoresponders

If you are just getting started, skip this section!

Autoresponders are messages that go out automatically once you assign someone to a special list. For example, I have a series of 15 different emails that go out over the course of 15 weeks for my new Etsy email subscribers. These are Etsy related only and people seem to love them!

Sending out a series of messages like this to “onboard” your new subscribers makes them love you even more, but what about if they sign up to more than one of your lists?

Oh crap!

Now you are going to be sending them multiple messages a day possibly and that would be terrible… they would start to fall out of love because you send too many messages and then they would unsubscribe or mark you as spam.

What to do, what to do?

My #1 Email Marketing Hack For My Multi-Niche Website

So now we are onto my number on hack that took forever to figure out, but once I did made EVERYTHING so much easier!

I assign days to my lists. Wah wah!

Okay, what does that mean? I ONLY send Etsy autoresponder emails out on Mondays, Authors on Tuesdays, Real Estate Agents on Wednesdays and then send my newsletters out on Friday.

BRILLIANT!

That way no one can get more than one email a day even if they sign up for more than one list AND there is always a day break before they get my newsletter.

Not Being A Jerk

I KNOW everyone says marketing people are mean and hateful and just trying to take your money, but I am not that kind of marketer. I actually care about my peeps and so before I figured this out I was super hesitant to do any heavy duty marketing beyond just sending out a weekly message.

But then I realized that many of my new subscribers probably didn’t know everything that I had been writing for the last 10 years (you think?) and so I needed to help get them up to speed with onboarding emails that were my best content.

But I hesitated because I didn’t want to be a jerk and send out too many emails.

Segregating my list by days fixed all of my anxiety and hesitation about setting up autoresponders or sending out messages to my lists!

What If You Don’t Want To Do Autoresponders?

Not everyone wants to take the time to set up autoresponders or maybe you are just getting started. This works even if you are a beginning marketer!

You could send out a broadcast message to your group on the right day that is a “saw this and thought of you”.

I do this sometimes too!

Say I find a cool article that I would send to one of my real estate friends because it is so good… then I just pop it in a message to my list and send it off with the message, “I saw this and thought of you”.

You know it will be of interest because they are on that list AND it shows that you care! PLUS you know it is quality content because you were going to send it to a friend first!

Email Marketing Wrapup

I KNOW everyone says marketing is dead and that you should stick to Facebook, but we have all seen that Facebook is not our marketing friend. They change things all the time and sometimes even delete accounts that people have spent years growing.

Having your own email list is a way to make sure you can contact your peeps even if everything else falls apart.

If you do nothing else this year, please start an email list or if you have one, please start emailing them more.

Most of my peeps are on a once a month or even once a quarter schedule, if you can up that to once a week or twice a month it can make a big difference in your sales and leads.

]]><p>If you are freaking out about your entrepreneur email marketing efforts because you don&#8217;t want to bombard your readers, this post is for you! Tips &#38; Ideas for how to have a great email marketing plan! I am an entrepreneur with a fair number of interests (aren&#8217;t most of us?) And with that in mind...</p>
<p><a class="more-link" href="https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/20/my-1-email-marketing-hack-for-my-multi-niche-website/">Read More &#187;</a></p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/20/my-1-email-marketing-hack-for-my-multi-niche-website/">My #1 Email Marketing Hack For A Multi-Niche Website | Entrepreneur Email Marketing</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com">Marketing Artfully</a>.</p>https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/20/my-1-email-marketing-hack-for-my-multi-niche-website/How To Write Super Long, Skyscraper Blog Posts … Advanced Blogging Tipshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarketingArtfully/~3/ETAiUqdi1Vo/bloggingTara JacobsenSun, 17 Dec 2017 09:23:16 PSThttps://marketingartfully.com/?p=13724

If you are a blogger, you have probably heard the advice… “write skyscraper blog posts” or do a “super long authority blog post”, BUT how do you DO that? How do you write a super long blog post that doesn’t take 20 hours to write?

I have some super simple tips for how to write long blog posts without devoting half you life to writing! Write faster and save time!

What credentials do I have to write this guide? My blog posts are generally 1,800-3,000 words long, and I LOVE writing.

I also have 3 kids, 2 dogs, 2 cats, a turtle, a husband, a “real” company, three gals who work for me and 2 Etsy stores so it is not like I have hours upon hours to write every day.

I have developed a system for going from nothing to a HUGE post in a very short time!

What Are Skyscraper Blog Posts

Basically writing a skyscraper posts mean that you find blog posts that are popular and lots of people link to, then write an EVEN BETTER blog post about that same topic and include lots of content. THEN reach out to the people who are linking to the first post and see if they will include your link in their article.

It sounds complicated but is super easy… find something popular and write a more comprehensive version of that same topic!

But how should you do that?

Start A Floating Document

Let’s just jump in! I have what I like to think of as a floating document… one that is just collecting bits and pieces of ideas. This is not even a draft, this is a pre-pre draft.

You can use anything to do this… the WordPress draft posts, MS Word, Evernote, sticky notes, functionally what you are trying to do is collect all kinds of bits and pieces of a post in one place.

Say for example I want to write a post about organizing your office, my “floating document” might look like this…

Mason jars… great pictures

Vintage desk trays (my stock)

Visual… clutter busters which is right

Amazon affiliate link

Small desk, big desk

NONE of these things is enough to even start writing a post BUT it is enough to start making a wee little outline based on things that I am thinking about!

Small desk/office, big desk office – should the post be niched to one or the other or do both

Are you a visual organizer?

What level of clutter do you want?

Tools to help you organize

Tips and tricks for organizing

THOSE ideas can start to be the heading of my sections in the post!

You can stop here and go into a “real” post or just keep adding bits to this post as you run across them. I have about 12 posts right now in draft that have some ideas in them that I could turn into a “post-post” really easily (this post started that way!)

Skyscraper Post Tip… it seems like you should just use the same headlines/sections that the original post did, but that is plagiarism not writing. Start your post with your thoughts and we will get to knowing what content is good or popular after that!

Helpful writing tool: If you want to write faster without all the pesky, well, writing, use FunnelScripts to generate big paragraphs of interesting copy for emails, headlines, etc. (#promo)

Save Your Words

Here is a tip that has saved me tons of time! Save your words.

Whether you are writing a book, an article or a blog post, oftentimes when you edit you are cutting out sentences or even whole paragraphs of content. Don’t just hit the delete key, “save” those words in a Floating Document to use later as a stand alone piece.

Obviously you were interested enough to write them in the first place, just expand on that one little part in a later blog post or article.

Getting Resources & References

One of the tenants of writing a skyscraper post is that it gives you lots of great ideas all on one big long post. With that in mind, you will want to have a bevy of resources to link to.

Should you collect them as you go or get them at the end. If you use the “Floating Document” approach, you will have a bunch of random links you can reference from your gathering process.

That said, you might want to get even more resources or have just been using your own thoughts until now. In that case you can add weight to your post by including reference links or videos that have helped you in your research like I included the link to Brian’s original skyscraper post and Neil’s trick for finding keywords.

I like to do my research as I go because it sparks more ideas and helps me to get more and more sections/headlines in my post. I rarely feel stuck for what to write because I have lots of great “prompts” throughout my “floating document”.

Check Out Popular Content

Google loves to reward content that links out to other relevant content. For example, if I were to link to a popular post about organizing your desk, they would get a great, relevant inbound link from my article, BUT I would also get a wee boost in the search rankings because of that link.

So check out what is popular in the topic you are writing about… with a twist…

Don’t just look up “organizing your desk”, look up the titles of your headlines/category sections. So in this example I would do a Google search for “visual organizing” which is a section of my post, instead of “organizing your desk” which it the total post. Doing that I found a post about Visual Organizing by a lady named Erica Duran which was really good!

She had 5 sections about: labeling, using the wall for clipboards, using photos, open shelving and color coding. Now, I wouldn’t just copy those, but I might take a couple of those and integrate them into my post under my headlines/sections.

So now this is how my Tools To Help You Organize section looks like

Clipboards

Baskets

Mason Jars

Desk Organziers

Colorful Folders

I have NOT copied Erin’s post at all, just take a wee bit of a guide from what I already know is popular and added it to my comprehensive guide!

Check The Posts You Already Rank For

Okay now let’s get down to some low hanging fruit! You may be surprised to know what keywords your site ALREADY ranks for!

Neil is great for showing us how to find keyword data. So in my example I would want to find out what OTHER posts my site ranks for organizing or desk keywords for and make sure to link to that post from my new post, writing a quick blurb about why it is relevant in my current post.

This will start to show Google that your site is about that topic you are writing about!

Write More To Flesh Out The Middle Bits

If you have done all things above, you probably have some great sections with ideas in them already. Do this until you have enough that you can write a substantial post.

For some people this will mean that they need 20 sections with two paragraphs in each, for some it will mean that they need to have 6 sections with 7 paragraphs each.

Neither way is better or worse, it just depends on your writing style. Don’t fight how you write, just do what come naturally to you and let the number of sections you discover fix any problems!

Reorder It At The End

One of the things that humans like to do is keep things in order. It feels like you should write the post “in order” that it is going to be read, but that may be my biggest tip of all!

You don’t have to have an order to your posts when you write them… instead write great interesting content for each section and then, at the end make sure it is in the best order possible to walk your reader from an idea to an outcome.

For example, the “Getting Resources & References” section of this post was right above this one until the very end. Because it is helpful for finding content I moved it way up, but for most of the process, it was just a little footnote down here near the end!

Editing It At The End

One last thing… please stop editing as you write. NO ONE writes perfect first drafts and that is precisely what slows down most writers. Instead break up your writing…

Do the floating document with random thoughts – the pre-pre draft

Write your sections/headlines – pre-draft

Fill in the blanks – draft version

Reorder

THEN edit at the end – final draft

I will finish my entire post before I pop open a preview and start editing. If you get in this habit you can save yourself A LOT of time!

Writing Super Long Skyscraper Blog Posts Wrapup

Whew, that was 1,500 words on writing and it took about and hour and a half total. Some of that was research and about 10 minutes trying to find Neil’s video that I loved.

All the rest was just fill in the blanks!

I promise, this is something that you can do. Start a notebook and put all the thoughts for a post on one page, open a google doc and start collecting thoughts or use something formal like Evernote to collect everything all in one place!

]]><p>If you are a blogger, you have probably heard the advice&#8230; &#8220;write skyscraper blog posts&#8221; or do a &#8220;super long authority blog post&#8221;, BUT how do you DO that? How do you write a super long blog post that doesn&#8217;t take 20 hours to write? I have some super simple tips for how to write...</p>
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/17/how-to-write-long-skyscraper-blog-posts/">How To Write Super Long, Skyscraper Blog Posts &#8230; Advanced Blogging Tips</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com">Marketing Artfully</a>.</p>https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/17/how-to-write-long-skyscraper-blog-posts/6 Super Unscientific, Easy Ideas To Check Your Blog & Social Media Statshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarketingArtfully/~3/uZQ72rsjWYE/bloggingsocial mediaTara JacobsenThu, 14 Dec 2017 11:55:51 PSThttps://marketingartfully.com/?p=13823

I am NOT a mega-mathy person so when I tell people that I know the stats on lots of my blog and social media accounts they are somewhat confused… no math but you can quote stats like a champ… what gives?

Today I am going to show you 6 ways that I obsessively track how my content is doing on my blog and social media so that I can make more things that people like!

1. Put the Popular Posts / Top 10 Plugin on your Website

The free Popular Posts Top 10 plugin counts the top posts per day/week/month in quantity overall! I have mine in my WordPress sidebar so I can see which of my posts are doing the best.

Those are the top 10 posts from my website over the last week. Now, they don’t change all that much but there are occasionally breakouts like the Christmas quotes that came in at #1 this week!

Knowing these numbers is great but what should you look for?

Trends… you can see that there are Etsy SEO trends, Customer Demographic trends and SEO and Keyword trends… whoo whoo! This lets me know possible topics for future blog posts.

Outliers… that Christmas quotes tells me that people like “holiday” type quote pages. Last month I had a spike for Thanksgiving Quotes and the month before that for Halloween Quotes… hmmm think I will make some New Years Quotes! You can find pockets of goodness from your posts.

Works with itty-bitty sites too! If you are seeing those numbers and FREAKING out because they are so high, you probably have a newer site. I can remember being stoked the first time one of my posts got 1,000 hits in a month let alone a week. So set your days to 30 and keep a running total of which of your posts are doing good! This works even BETTER on little sites because you can track down quickly when there is a weird spike in traffic to a particular post.

Check that page! Okay, now down to marketing…yay! Take that Top 10 list and look at those pages. Can you add a banner to your course or a link to your newsletter signup page? Could you make a better picture and increase the traffic even more knowing that people like that page a lot already? Maybe get an affiliate link on there so you can get a little extra cash from your best traffic. Link to another article on your website so they visit multiple pages and decrease the bounce rate on your site (Google likes this).

Setting up the plugin is super easy! Just go to your plugins and search “top 10 popular posts”, install and activate. Then slide it over to the “widgets” section of your sidebar. That is it!

This is how I set up mine, not too much, not too little, just right!

When you are starting out, there won’t be any info there yet, the plugin counts as you go so don’t freak out if you see something like this…

In a week you will have a fun looking top 10 list like I do!

2. The Bottom of the Page Count

Good news, the second thing I obsessively track is part of this plugin so you don’t have to do anything else. When you add the Popular Posts Top 10 plugin you will notice at the bottom of your blog post pages a counter…

… it tells you how many people have come by to your page today and then lifetime (from when you install the plugin).

Use this to…

Pop in to check and see if a recent post is doing well numbers-wise according to your site. 50 might seem high or low…. you won’t know until you start watching!

See how many people came to see that page today without having to do the whole Google analytics thing.

3. Check Your Social Shares

Recently I swapped out other social sharing plugins for Social Warfare (it is free too!) They have really cool buttons that make it easy for your visitors to share you posts. #promo

But what I love is that they also have counts of how many times your post has been shared on the different social media site (with the free you don’t get to see the Twitter numbers).

What to do..

See which social sites like which kinds of content. For example you might notice that a post about DIY did great on Pinterest but not on Facebook. Or you might see one that went nuts on LinkedIn and vow to share that once a month at least in your scheduler!

Check your sharing. I have one post that does great on Google, but when I looked at it I noticed that I had NEVER shared it on social media. Seriously?

Check your pictures. There have been some pictures I have just thrown together and thought I will fix them later, only to find out that they were doing great getting shared on social. No sense in messing up a good thing! If your pictures are doing good, leave them be!

4. Pinterest Popularity

I KNOW, if you have a business Pinterest account you can check your stats but I don’t find that to be all that helpful because I like to see things at glance.

With that in mind, head over to your Pinterest and check your boards to see how many shares each pin gets.

This is EVEN LESS scientific than most of my tips because Pinterest doesn’t cumulatively count pins anymore (each new version starts at 0 rather than having a count of every time that pin is on their website).

But it is a good way to split test your pins easily. I do two versions of a pin and then Pin them at the same time and see which one does better.

For sure on this one people like cupcakes more than guys with computers.

5. Checking Instagram Stats

If you go to your Instagram account on your computer you can hover over your posts and see a quick count of how many likes and comments a post has gotten.

By taking sweeping checks of these I can start to get a feel for WHY people like some things more than others. Was it the…

Keywords

Light and bright picture

Colors

Description I wrote

Hashtags

By watching this day-to-day you get a feel for what your followers like and give them more of that and less of the ones they hate!

For example, say selfies of you get lots of likes but you think they are dumb. You are overruled and should take more pictures of yourself so people can see what you are up to!

6. Check Your Twitter Notifications

Many of us have Twitter running on autopilot, but it is worth swinging by there from time to time to see which of your content people are pinning and what they are saying about it!

Jenn (@Unit25Creative) gave me some great feedback that my advanced content is striking a chord with marketing people. This is a great way to get feedback about what kinds of content the people of Twitter like to share (and they generally tell you why when you share it!)

Check Your Blog & Social Media Stats Wrapup

There you have it, just a few of the ways that I check my stats on an ongoing basis. The nice thing about this is there is not the pressure of something fancy like Google Analytics, instead I can just bop around and get anecdotal information a little at a time!

Note, I am not saying that you shouldn’t use Google analytics or the built in stats from the social sites, just that there are other ways to find cool things out about your content that you might not have of thought about before!

]]><p>I am NOT a mega-mathy person so when I tell people that I know the stats on lots of my blog and social media accounts they are somewhat confused&#8230; no math but you can quote stats like a champ&#8230; what gives? Today I am going to show you 6 ways that I obsessively track how...</p>
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/14/blog-social-media-stats-checking/">6 Super Unscientific, Easy Ideas To Check Your Blog &#038; Social Media Stats</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com">Marketing Artfully</a>.</p>https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/14/blog-social-media-stats-checking/Boldly Changing Directions (Again) In Your Creative Entrepreneur Businesshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarketingArtfully/~3/x2CMSRocC9Q/mindsetSmall Business Marketingbig ideasTara JacobsenTue, 12 Dec 2017 06:08:54 PSThttps://marketingartfully.com/?p=13782

If you are a creative small business owner, there is a chance that you have tried an idea or two over the years. And everyone is always super willing to give you tips about how you should focus your business. But what if you want to try something new? Again?

Today we are going to look at some of the main things that hold creative business owners back!

There is some cussing in this one and a few affiliate links…
back out now if you hate that kind of thing.

Fear

Let’s start right out of the gate with a big ole one, fear! Our brains are super wired to be afraid of anything new so when we have a great idea that we think could help our business grow, our amygdala immediately kicks in and shouts… THIS WILL KILL US! STOP!

You can trust me on this, I have a degree in psychology, but also have that same reaction personally from time to time, usually out of the blue.

I will thinking about taking a picture and all of a sudden THIS will happen…

Oh for fucks sake, who are you to think that anyone wants to see your pictures? You are not a good enough photographer to take that shot… you will fail! AND you quit band in 9th grade!

Okay, that last bit was my mother, but seriously, it is weird how fast our limbic system can jump in and shout fire if we are trying to poke one toe out of line.

Shame

I have tried LOTS of things over the years, with lots of people, in lots of places and some of them have worked out STUPENDOUSLY, and some not so much.

Why then do I feel like I have to justify trying something new to myself or anyone else?

Because the shame of all my failures comes crashing down ever time I think about trying something, ESPECIALLY if it is something that I have failed at before.

Say I want to do a course on Skillshare, where they have personally reached out to me and asked me to talk about Etsy because that is a subject they need help with. With that kind of backing, for sure I couldn’t feel weird, right?

Except that voice says…

You paid all that money to buy the membership site software and no one joined… remember when you spent all that time doing a course and only sold a few, AND all the people making courses are charlatans and only out to take peoples money… do you want to steal from little old grandmas and put them out of their homes?

Holy crap that runs off the rails FAST.

In fact I did make two classes on Skillshare! They are doing well, adding another income stream and helping people. But damn, if you had to be in my head when I considered it, it would have sounded like I was tempting the downfall of society as we know it.

Doubt

Okay, doubt can dress up like shame but is a little bit more teen-ager-y than shame. Shame is bone deep and internal, doubt is like those girls in high school who didn’t like what kinds of jeans you wore.

Doubt says things like…

You are too heavy right now to make videos or you don’t have the right microphone to do podcasts or you should wait to do this until you have taken that class in website design.

Doubt is kind of an asshole and nibbles on your self confidence.

I don’t really suffer from external doubt that often, but I did just do a podcast with a friend and she literally was like, “if I can’t make this microphone work I am probably too stupid to do a podcast.”

Seriously? Last time I looked being interesting and fun had NOTHING to do with mechanical abilities!

Worry

Say we do muster up the courage to start doing something new…yay! Wait just until the shine wears off or the first thing breaks and you can bet our old friend worry will show up to make us lose sleep.

Worry is that baseline feeling that everything is about to screw the heck up if you are not vigilant.

Worry tells you…

You didn’t use the right word in that email… dammit, why couldn’t you have said it THIS way instead. Oops, did you forget to schedule that call? Can’t you do anything right, you are SO not going meet your timeline for this project.”

Worry nibbles at us all day, every day, pecking away like little bird until we break down and take a nap in the afternoon just to stop it for a few minutes of blessed peace (just me?)

Your Friends and Family

Alrighty then, we are done with our internal demons, let’s head on over to our loved ones who are always looking out for our best interests! Probably they have heard you have a new idea a time or two before and they probably are not as excited as you are about this new venture.

If they are good friends, maybe they get a little excited and pitch in with some suggestions, but I generally find that my ideas do better when I wait until I am a ways in to spring them on anyone I know in real life.

It’s not that they don’t want you to be happy, but in their eyes all those “failures” you had before should be getting you down right about now… in fact, wouldn’t things be better if you just got a nice, normal job?

You HAVE to remember that entrepreneurs are wired differently than muggles and they will never understand about working your ass off for something that might or might not work.

Random Strangers Who Will Judge You

Okay, now we get to the meat of the matter. I promise you that at least a wee bit hesitation comes to us all about “they” will think.

What will they think if I start a new MLM?

What will they think if I open an Etsy shop?

What will they think if I shut down my membership site and start a Shopify store?

What will they think if I want to be a weight loss coach?

What will they thin if I say I want to write a book?

I was talking with my mastermind partner, Kir, and she was telling me that a friend of hers was afraid to promote the MLM she was excited about because she is afraid “they” will judge her for joining ANOTHER MLM company.

Here is the hard part, they probably will judge you…sigh.

I would love to say that everything is sunshine and roses and the world will blindly fall in line with your new idea, but I promise you, “they” are waiting for you to fail.

It is like that story about the crabs pulling each other back into the bucket… for some reason we are wired as a species to think badly about someone who is trying to rise above their station.

So this is what you need to do… channel your inner bitch and just think…

Go fuck yourself (said in a jersey accent)

And then go back to building your business!

Do Something “They” Will Hate

You wanna know a secret? I started my Etsy store as a kind of protest against “real” marketing people. I was burned out and bummed out and didn’t really love marketing anymore, which is super sad as that is my passion.

So I thought, what would “they” think is really stupid and not worthwhile for professionals… OF COURSE….Etsy!

Etsy is little tiny shops, with WOMEN (gasp), who are not trying to rule the world, just have a really nice life doing what they love and making money.

Not sure I could have picked something further from the mainstream of the crowd I was running with at the time.

And I LOVE it! It is just a wee bit of my business, but it introduced me to product photography (ADORE) and also to new set of friends who are supportive and NOT hoping I will fail.

If you are sassy like me, try something weird to see what happens. Do it unapologetically and with gusto!

About All Those “Failures” – You Have Learned Skills!

Alrighty then, let’s talk about why you might need to read a post about boldly starting something new… have you failed before?

OF COURSE you have!!! We all have… multiple times… in all different ways!

Yay failure!!

Okay, maybe that was a wee bit too far, but failures are only wasted time if you let them be.

When I did make the Skillshare classes it took so much less time because I already had the software and skills to make movies fast. When I started Etsy I didn’t have a big learning curve because I already understood SEO and could get my items seen more easily.

Every one of the failures let you learn something and that will help you with the new thing you are trying.

Tell Someone Who Is Like You Your Crazy Business Idea

I was so glad that Kir’s friend was brave enough to talk to her! Hopefully she was able to get the encouragement she needed to launch her new company in a big way without shame or doubt.

If you are thinking about an idea, tell someone who has wicked good ideas all the time too!

I am always down to hear a good idea, shoot me an email (tara – at – marketingartfully.com) and it will be happy to give you a cheer…

]]><p>If you are a creative small business owner, there is a chance that you have tried an idea or two over the years. And everyone is always super willing to give you tips about how you should focus your business. But what if you want to try something new? Again? Today we are going to...</p>
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/12/boldly-changing-directions-creative-entrepreneur-business/">Boldly Changing Directions (Again) In Your Creative Entrepreneur Business</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com">Marketing Artfully</a>.</p>https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/12/boldly-changing-directions-creative-entrepreneur-business/5 Different Goal Setting Systems… Which One Works For You?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarketingArtfully/~3/ZiV5LctMBls/goal settingTara JacobsenMon, 11 Dec 2017 17:12:52 PSThttps://marketingartfully.com/?p=13814

Today I have been listening to a bunch of different people talk about personality types and knowing yourself… which lead me to thinking about how we are all different and need different goal setting systems in order to be successful!

When you are working towards your goal, there is definitely not a one size fits all approach (even if you read a definitive guide and someone said their way was the only right way!)

Many times we feel like failures because we heard about a cool new way to accomplish our goals and jumped in with abandon, only to find that we failed, again… sigh.

Because goals are my jam (and part of my work revolves around helping other people achieve their goals) I read A LOT of self help books about goal setting. With that in mind, I thought I would go over a few that I have heard about, tried or failed at myself!

there are affiliate links in this post, if you click them and purchase I will get a wee bit of money

10X or Big Hairy Audacious Goals

To start, let’s get the machismo, beat your chest, “kick goals in the ass” guys out of the way first!

Grant Cardone is a huge proponent for setting 10X goals … meaning that you take whatever goal you think you can accomplish and then ten times that goal into what you are shooting for. Gary Vaynerchuk is a great guy too who is all about hustle, working 18 hours a day and having dreams of owning the New York Jets.

I actually love these guys and in the past was able to do some death marches following their lead. I would set huge goals and then work my face off to accomplish them.

An example would be to say that you want to make $100,000 this year and then 10X that to say you want to make a million and then work back to see what you have to do to accomplish this.

What I love… I love the enthusiasm of this system! It is fun to dream of a world where you shoot for the stars and even if you miss you succeed greatly by only getting to the moon. Also, to attempt these goals you have to have a mindset bigger than what your world is now!

What I dislike… for me, failing at a big goal just feels like failing, I don’t get a rush from having succeeded partway. Also, since I got the kids it is not possible to spend all my time in pursuit of just my business goals so this is one is out of reach for me right now.

I think that this is a GREAT way to move your business ahead at a super fast pace and if you have the time, definitely give this type of goal setting a shot!

Slow and Steady Wins The Race

Another type of goal setting system is to have a goal (say to have $10,000 in your emergency fund) and to work a little bit each day, week or month towards that goal.

My pal Kirsten is a slow and steady goal setter. She is happy to put away $1.50 a week towards a goal and doesn’t worry about the big picture, she just knows if she does a little bit at a time this will add up for her in the long run!

Because she follows Dave Ramsey, I have to think that you could find out more about her systems by checking out his Total Money Makeover book for his guidance!

What I love… nothing…ha! This is NOT the way that I accomplish goals, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work for you! Kir has had great success over the years by doing “baby steps” along with Dave.

What I dislike… I am more of a task oriented person and this doesn’t have any breakdown of what you are supposed to accomplish. Instead you have a big goals and do little things every day to work towards it.

Super Structured With Charts and Graphs

Brian Tracy is an old friend (he doesn’t know me, but he is my friend) … I have listened to hundreds of hours of his recordings and he is super slow, deliberate and structured in everything he does (he has 21 different parts of his plan).

What I like… I do like the idea of keeping track of my goals and progress. That old saying, “Inspect What You Expect”, is so true. If you are aren’t tracking and measuring, it is hard to tell if you are making progress.

What I don’t like… if goal setting becomes too complicated I do one of two things… 1) I get so involved in the minutia of figuring out what my goals should be that I forget to do them or 2) if I have to take more time recording my goals than doing them I get grumpy. That said, there are MANY more people who love checking things off and making spreadsheets of their goals so I am probably in the minority.

ALL The Things

Another friend writes down a million things to do in a day…. okay, that is a bit much, it really is only 50 things to do each day. Holy schnikeys, that is a lot of things to do.

While that may seem overwhelming to you, many people are super happy to have every single thing they want to do each day and week written down and planned out so they can just run on autopilot. All the big decisions have been done and it is just implementing against the plan.

What I like… I love the comprehensiveness of this. Having this many tasks written down means that there has been some careful consideration of goals and then a detailed path laid out to getting there.

What I don’t like… having that many things to do on a list everyday would be seriously de-motivational to me. Huge amounts of things to do all in one place would probably seize me up and I would do any of them.

Just One Thing Every Day, And Then One Thing More

This is the way that I do goal setting! At the first part of each month I decide a few things that I am going to do everyday. This month I am writing a blog post every day and posting a pretty picture every day. That’s it.

OF COURSE I am doing a whole lot more than that, but I consider a day a success if I have accomplished just those two things this month.

Next month I am going to do $100 worth of listings a day, a video a day and continue my pretty picture a day. None of these things is time consuming in itself and all of them I can do in advance and just implement them on the day they are due.

For example, I am leaving pretty early tomorrow to have lunch with a friend and so I already have a blog post written and ready to post in case I don’t have enough time to do a full one tomorrow.

What I LOVE… I am a pretty simple person who doesn’t like to have millions of things to do in a day. I am super happy to feel accomplished if I get my few things done and then fit all the other parts of my business around them.

I also love the fact that the cumulative result is pretty spectacular. By posting a pretty picture a day on my Instagram account, I wind up with 31 new pictures, a whole bunch of new followers and a chance to be found by someone who might share one of them even further. 31 pictures gives me way more chance of a win than if I just did a few a week.

What I don’t like… sometimes I feel like that is not enough. Like I should be packing my day with things or that I am not working hard enough. Tomorrow I have my blog post (done already), one pretty picture, meeting with friend, a speaking event in the evening and that is it. Seems like a PERFECT day, but being from Pennsylvania, sometimes my Puritan work ethic yells at me that I should be busier!

By having something I do every day I keep from having to mess around with my schedule, wonder what day it is or think overly much. Instead I just do my few things and then move on!

Additionally, I don’t have to have a GREAT picture or blog post a day, I just have to have one that I feel good enough about to publish. Some will take off and be a success and some will be total duds. Either way, it is not my place to worry about the result. My only obligation is to do it.

Liz Gilbert talks about this in her book, Big Magic, she didn’t vow to be a brilliant writer, she only vowed to be a writer! It is up to the world to decide if they like her work or not.

Goal Setting Wrapup

Hopefully there is some goal setting technique that will strike a nerve with you! If any of them sound like something that would work for you, then read up, try it and DON’T worry about being perfect.

Get going on a system and no matter how much or how little you do, it will be better than doing nothing!

]]><p>Today I have been listening to a bunch of different people talk about personality types and knowing yourself&#8230; which lead me to thinking about how we are all different and need different goal setting systems in order to be successful! When you are working towards your goal, there is definitely not a one size fits...</p>
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/11/5-goal-setting-systems/">5 Different Goal Setting Systems&#8230; Which One Works For You?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com">Marketing Artfully</a>.</p>https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/11/5-goal-setting-systems/Entrepreneur Ideas… How To Do Work You Love (AND Make Money)http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarketingArtfully/~3/B-5Y9UZ_mQ0/mindsetSmall Business Marketingmake moneyTara JacobsenFri, 08 Dec 2017 09:02:18 PSThttps://marketingartfully.com/?p=13806

It is so funny to me that as entrepreneurs we get to pick what we do during the day, but so many of us spend most of our time doing things we don’t like…. how can we do what we love AND make money?

Ever wonder how to quit that rat race and do work you love…

About 3 years ago I figured out how to spend most of my time doing things I love and since I have had this talk with three different people over the last week, I figured I better share it with you all!

Top Level – Your Three Business Squares

Years ago I started teaching a class about the 3 squares. Functionally it means that you can only have three parts of your business at one time to be effective.

These are high level pieces, like divisions of a company!

So for me my three squares look like this….

I LOVE doing Etsy and really like my clients and selling online products so this is great for me!

Some people have a job so that would go into one of their squares and some people have kids they are the sole parent for so they would fill one with their kids.

Functionally you want to look at your life and figure out three BIG things that take up the majority of your business time.

Then you want to divide your time in roughly that way!

I spend Mondays and some of Wednesdays on my clients, most mornings working on my internet empire and do big chunks of time when I am sourcing or listing my Etsy products.

What this also means is that I DON’T have time for anything else! Even if someone comes along with a great idea, if it doesn’t match one of my squares I politely say no!

TO DO :: Pick the three squares of your business and write them down! And no, you can’t explain to me how you have 5 squares or that you couldn’t possibly narrow it down. We can’t focus on that many things at once so if you have too many parts, either figure out how to merge them under one umbrella or stop doing some (for now).

Doing Work You Love

For YEARS I thought that knowing the three things I was focusing for my business was deep enough to be helpful, and when you start with a big mess, it really does help clear the decks.

But three years ago I figured out another set of three things to focus on … the three things I LIKE TO DO MOST!

What?!?!

As women we often don’t think that what we love to do is worth anything to anyone else. It has been ingrained in our culture that if you are happy doing something, you are probably wasting time.

But I have found that when I focus on doing just what I love, everything else gets easier… so what do I love?

Writing (blogs and books)

Making pretty picture (taking them or making them in graphic design)

Bossing people around (mostly through videos)

That is it!

I came to this realization when I realized I was so busy doing “stuff” that I was having to squeeze my blogging time into the wee corners of my life. That was STUPID!

It is what I love and the way that most people find out about me, so why was I doing that last?

Here are the things that my friend Rebekah likes to do…

work out

research social media

tell people about it

and my friend kir…

work out

texting

inspiring people with how she lives

There are seriously no right or wrong answers here, you just have to be honest with yourself and figure out what three things you would do all the time if someone would pay you for it (we will figure out the how later!)

TO DO :: Write down the three things that give you the most joy in your life. Those ones where you sit (or stand) to do them and hours just waste away.

How To Make Money

Frequently in my business people have been confused about how I make money. From the front of my operation it looks like I write blog posts and make helpful videos…. hmmm not much money there!

But if you look under my skirt I make money LOTS of ways, big and small!

Clients pay me monthly

Coaching clients pay me monthly

I promote affiliate products

I sell products in two Etsy stores and a Shopify store

I get paid to write promoted blog posts

I do one hour consultations

I get residuals from book sales on Amazon

There are probably a few other ways, but those are the easy ones off the top of my head!

Okay, now let’s look at how Rebekah can make money with the things she likes to do (work out, research social media, tell people about it)

1. She can do coaching to help other people lose weight (she has lost a whole person) – She needs to be careful though, because she doesn’t like talking on the phone. Maybe, like me, she needs to do Skype calls so she can see her clients when she talks to them. OR she could do email-only support for her clients or set up a Facebook group and only do group coaching with no one-on-ones!

2. She can work out with people – Not necessarily a trainer, but if someone has never been to a gym and needs to know what the heck to do, she is your gal!

3. She can use her research skills on social media to promote companies – Imagine if a gym could have their own gym-rat, Instagram babe there to promote them 5 times a week! Rebekah would get to work out AND mess around with another social account.

4. She could be an affiliate for products that she could promote on social media – Being a social media influencer is a “thing” but the added benefit for Rebekah is that she could use affiliate products to “test” different social sites without going through all the work of making the products herself.

5. She can make videos to get people into her pipeline – Rebekah said she wanted to do a podcast (we did one together years ago) but that she was being stymied by technology. Instead of going that route, I suggested that she do videos (which she knows how to do) that she can then pull the audio from to make podcast episodes… BRILLIANT!

Kirsten likes working out, texting and inspiring people by how she lives.

1. She could make exercise plans for individuals or to download – I know she has these and she can do them easily, so this one is a no brainer!

2. She can be a vegan or triathlete coach – because this is a such a niche area she could totally find 10 people who wanted to be coached each month. Because she like texting, she could do all of her coaching via text with occasional phone calls.

3. She could have a paid Facebook group that talked about training for Ironmans (she has competed twice)

4. She can grow her following by taking videos of her food and workouts (she does this and it works!)

5. She is an MLM superstar who can promote healthy products that she uses every day

I could think of about 1,000 other things my friends could do, but you get the picture!

But What If No One Wants What You Love? How Can You Make Money?

I was chatting with Rebekah today and she said it makes her soooo mad when she sees someone else doing what she loves and making money! Not because she is jealous, but she hadn’t known how to leverage HER skills and passions into a paying proposition.

If you have never read Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, Crush It yet and like what I am talking about today you need to go read it (or re-read it!) #ad

There is ALWAYS a way to leverage your passions into something that makes money. If you don’t have any great ideas off the top of your head then do a wee bit of research…

1. Go to Amazon and see if there are any products related to your passion

2. Do that same search on Etsy and Ebay

3. Research your idea on Google… get SUPER specific! For example, doing a search for “meal plans” there are 32,800,000 results. BUT do that same search for “triathlete vegan meal plan for women” and there are 0 results! Does that mean that no one else is doing those, nope, but when you get that niche everything gets easier.

4. Find the top person doing what you want to do and see what they are selling … I would do this at least 10 people deep. Write EVERY way you see them making money and then figure out which ones match what you like to do!

No One Is Marie Forleo When They Start (not even Marie!)

It’s funny, I think I share this video every year about this time! In it Marie talks about what it was like to start her little video channel (which has since grown to over 430,000 subscribers!)

How To Get Started

If you have figured out that your current work is not your dream work, then you need to start doing something else at least part of the time that is in alignment with your goals.

For me that is posting a fancy picture once a day on Instagram.

Seriously? One lousy picture a day, how will that help me get closer to my goals?!?!

For Rebekah it is starting to make one video a day to post on her socials.

Again, how can one video do anything?!?!

We always want to find the “big win”. The sweeping change that we can make to get our whole life to another place.

But I am here to tell you, my Etsy stores all started with one little product, and then another. My photography was embarrassingly bad but now is better (check it out on my Instagram!) My blog started with one post… EVERYONE starts somewhere.

Do me a favor, write down your three squares and then the three things you like to do… don’t judge, just write them down.

And pick one thing you are going to do every day for a week to start your dream. Just one, every day.

And if you like it, then do it for another week! If you didn’t like it, try something else for a week.. a week is long enough to get the kinks out and really do it!

And don’t think you are going to make a million dollars the first day… make a wee bit of money and then make some more.

BONUS :: Fixing The Pigeon Hole Problem

For YEARS I resisted doing things that would pigeon hole me! For example I DO NOT want to be the “Instagram Gal” or the “LinkedIn Guy”. I don’t want to focus only on Realtors or just do author posts. I don’t want to build myself an empire I am stuck in that I have to dig my way out of!

But when I turn it around and say that I like writing blog posts, I can write any kinds of blog posts I want! I can write a ton of mindset ones, then do a bunch of Etsy ones and creep back into author ones when I get interested again.

Starting with what I like to do and then implementing against that means I will always be doing what I like, the only thing that will chance is the output of that work!

]]><p>It is so funny to me that as entrepreneurs we get to pick what we do during the day, but so many of us spend most of our time doing things we don&#8217;t like&#8230;. how can we do what we love AND make money? Ever wonder how to quit that rat race and do work...</p>
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/08/entrepreneur-ideas-how-to-do-work-you-love-and-make-money/">Entrepreneur Ideas&#8230; How To Do Work You Love (AND Make Money)</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com">Marketing Artfully</a>.</p>https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/08/entrepreneur-ideas-how-to-do-work-you-love-and-make-money/Should You Use White Background or Lifestyle Product Photography?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarketingArtfully/~3/QXoYn3c2Giw/etsy marketingProduct PhotographyTara JacobsenThu, 07 Dec 2017 12:25:05 PSThttps://marketingartfully.com/?p=13758

Today is going to be a hot one! If you are doing product photography should you have plain-jane white backgrounds like on Amazon or should you have lifestyle styled photos?

Here is the difference shown super plainly… the left is a stylized lifestyle shot from my instagram account and the right one is the same item on a stark white background, in other words a typical product photography shot!

There are definitely things to consider in the whole white background or lifestyle photos fight…

Where are you selling?

If you are selling on Amazon you have to have at least your first photo be like the one on the right with the white background. Amazon product photography rules

Ebay has just implemented search precedence for white background photos. Makes sense because they have more large companies selling and this will help Ebay look more consistent.

Etsy is way more loosey-goosey about photography and welcomes lifestyle photos… more about this later!

You may want to have white photos on your Woo Commerce or Shopify site too!

What are you selling?

Stock or mass produced items generally have white background pictures available from the manufacturer. But some other cool products have white backgrounds that do come to mind! For example, say you sell hard copy planners with bright covers, you might want to take a white background shot for your ecommerce store.

But what about if you are selling something that is a little more obscure? Having a stark white photo with no points of reference can be a detriment to your sales.

Who are you selling to?

If you are selling a business product (think desk chairs), the chances that someone will need to see it “in action” are probably pretty slim. We all know how desk chairs work and can pretty much extrapolate how it will look in our offices.

But if you are selling cool tshirts to young hipsters, you may want to consider lifestyle pictures with your tees on young, cute models. Having “mockup” shots will not show how wonderful your tshirts are in person!

Pros for White Background Product Photography

If you are selling a commodity item that is purchased on price and has wide distribution, your buyers are probably going to be expecting to see professional white background photos.

Show features

For example, this iPhone case is very clearly shown. You can see the back and the front, plus there is a little shadow on the bottom to give it some depth. (photo credit caseology_store)

Easy & Saves Space

It is MUCH easier to get a setup that makes taking white photos simple and fast. Get a photography light box and you can just pop your product in and snap, snap, snap!

Free Tools :: I use Fotofuse when I want to make a white-white or black background

Cons for White Background Product Photography

While white backgrounds are clean and crisp, there are some drawbacks to using them…

It Screams Sales

When you see a product on a white background like this you KNOW it is something for sale. This means that all your white background pics are probably going to be a big turn off on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

It Is Boring

If you are selling handmade or custom items, having the same backgrounds for all your pictures is super boring. As a handmade or vintage seller, one of the big differences you have is that your items are unique. Taking a little bit of time to make your pictures interesting is a great way to make more sales.

Pros for Lifestyle Product Photography

I am ALL about the pros of using lifestyle photography! These are in no particular order…

Instagram users love to share and like styled photos

For this one I didn’t want to pull big names because most of us don’t have tens of thousands of dollars to do professional photo shoots, but we can take cooler pictures!

On Instagram, the top boots on the steps would be much more likely to get engagement on Instagram.

Battle of the big brands on Pinterest

So for this I wanted to see what the big boys are doing and how their photos stacked up. I did a search for “Rustic Home Decor” and found two rugs from Home Depot and Ashley Home Store.

To me it is all too obvious that the one on the right has MUCH more chance to be saved or clicked EVEN THOUGH it is an ad!

Etsy loves lifestyle photos!

If you follow Etsy’s newsletters or editors picks, they are almost always exclusively lifestyle photography shots. That one on the top left was the ONLY one on this page, all the other ones were some kind of lifestyle shot (even a simple one like the pink capped bath bombs with a simple gold ribbon in the back).

Cons for Lifestyle Product Photography

There are at least two obvious cons that come to mind with lifestyle product photography…

Too fancy product photography

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room… my picture at the top where the candlesticks are in a VERY busy shot.

Now, this IS a bit much, but it has gotten a good response on both Instagram and Pinterest (especially when you consider it is a sales post!)

The right candlestick is visible and the left one is all in a mush.

Is this a great picture to sell candlesticks, probably not, unless the person who wants to buy a weird pair of candlesticks happens to see it!

But it does help people find my profile and like my pictures.

It is harder to do

Taking that picture took about an hour from start to finish… that is a REALLY long time in comparison with popping them into a lightbox and doing a white background picture.

I think the fun little bath bombs above are a great mix, still white background, probably in a box, but added that little piece of gold behind it to add a little bit of interest.

Which Should You Do?

If you hate taking picture and would rather spend your time networking and making connections online, then don’t bother with lifestyle pictures.

Everyone should play to their strengths and if your items are super cute you can use just little props to make them look amazing (I know the pictures the bottom gal shares work because I bought two of her pins!)

If you like doing lifestyle pictures start small, add a few little things into the pictures. KNOW that your pictures will not be pretty when you start and that you will look back and think, “wow I thought that was good?!?!” but they will get better!

This top picture is one I took a little over a year ago and the one on the bottom was from yesterday. Now, they might not be your cup of tea, but for sure my styling and composition have gotten MUCH better, just by taking more and more pictures.

]]><p>Today is going to be a hot one! If you are doing product photography should you have plain-jane white backgrounds like on Amazon or should you have lifestyle styled photos? Here is the difference shown super plainly&#8230; the left is a stylized lifestyle shot from my instagram account and the right one is the same...</p>
<p><a class="more-link" href="https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/07/should-you-use-white-background-or-lifestyle-product-photography/">Read More &#187;</a></p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/07/should-you-use-white-background-or-lifestyle-product-photography/">Should You Use White Background or Lifestyle Product Photography?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com">Marketing Artfully</a>.</p>https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/07/should-you-use-white-background-or-lifestyle-product-photography/5 Tips To Help Your Brand Strategy … Small Business Social Media Marketinghttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarketingArtfully/~3/snSBHfSDRt8/Small Business Marketingsocial mediafacebookinstagramtwitterTara JacobsenTue, 05 Dec 2017 10:19:22 PSThttps://marketingartfully.com/?p=13760

Social media can be super effective as a marketing tool, but we aren’t always so up to date with all the parts of our empire!

5 super solid, practial tips for growing you social media brand. This one is for small business owners who are not spending all day in social, but who want to use actual strategy in their marketing efforts.

For me this happens when I get something new going and then don’t swing back around and add it to my profiles or change out what is there when I change product lines or focus.

Today we are going to take a look at all different bits of our social profiles and see if we need to update anything!

1. Which Socials Do Your Blog Visitors See?

It is a really good idea to “social icons” on the sidebars of your blog, at the bottom or on your contact page to help people connect with your social media accounts.

I KNOW, you would rather they joined your email list BUT maybe they just weren’t ready for that kind of commitment yet OR they like connecting with social media better!

I think a lot about where I send my social recommendations to! On this site I send them to more business-y social accounts like my business Twitter and even to LinkedIn. On my fun site, ArtsyFartsyLife.com I send them to my creative socials like my Glamorously Vintage Instagram!

Where do your customers like to do social? If you are selling to 20 year olds, you may have to have a SnapChat account to be effective with your marketing. Even if YOU hate Facebook, that might be the best place to send your social traffic if you get a lot of engagement there.

Where are you the best? I actually love doing Instagram so sending people to any of my accounts means that they will get a good experience. On the other hand I HATE LinkedIn, so leaving that one off entirely wouldn’t be out of line for me. They would have a horrible experience with me there since I ignore all the direct messages and rarely log in!

To Do: Click on all your social media links from your website. Look at what they get to critically and see if you would be excited to click that follow or like button based on the content you have there! If you would not, take that button off or change it something that is better.

2. Highlight One You Want To Grow

I am actively trying to grow my Glamorously Vintage Instagram! Whoo whoo… but the link to get to it was W-A-Y down the line on my sidebar which means that on mobile no one would EVER see it! I moved the “Follow Me On Instagram” button right to the top of some of my pages so that it would show up right after my blog posts on mobile!

The key to this is picking ONE social account that you are trying to grow and not just having everything there, hoping that SOMETHING will be good enough to stick!

To Do: Think about the ONE account you want to grow and put a link to it at the TOP of your blog sidebar!

You could also use a Milotree popout if you have a wee bit of money to devote to growing your followers (#ad)

3. Is Your Avatar Up-To-Date and Consistent?

Many times you can use your logo as your social media avatar (that little picture of you) BUT If you can it is really best to use a picture of yourself, like a real person!

If you are using a personal picture, is that consistent across all your social media channels?

I use a black an white picture of the top of my head. I did have it taken a few years ago, but I wear those same glasses and have about the same amount of salt and pepper in my hair now.

Don’t hang onto a picture just because you look good in it from 20 years ago, make sure you use something that people would recognize if they see you on the street!

To Do: Make sure you have a good “head shot” and then put it on all of your social media channels!

4. Are Your Social Headers Consistent with Your Brand Strategy?

You will hear me talk about consistency A LOT. Humans like to be comfortable and if they go to one social media site of yours and see a yellow illustration and then go to another site and see a black and white photo, they could become confused and not follow you!

Having a cohesive look across your accounts, blog and collateral is your brand strategy. We put SO much thought into our logos and then let all our other graphics just flail around out there all willy-nilly.

As you can see above there is NO consistency either with color or brand on my two accounts. With that in mind I decided to hustle over and get a new picture that would work better for all my socials!

I have fixed my main social profiles with this fun little picture! It is cool because I wear these kinds of tennis shoes and work with ecommerce sellers so it is a great fit for my regular profiles… but for my Facebook business pages I need to think a little bit more!

To Do: Get a consistent look for the header images on your social sites that is in line with your brand!

5. On Facebook Add A “Button” To Click

Okay, now that I have a good look for my personal accounts I want to make sure that the headers in my business accounts on Facebook have a “call to action!” I want to give them something more to do than just follow me.

When people go to my Marketing Artfully Facebook page they can see my header that looks just like the popup of my website. There is a click here button that goes to the description of the picture which gives them the link to sign up for my newsletter… brilliant!

Do I get millions of signups? Nope, but I do get some from Facebook and this is a really passive way of growing your email list or directing people where you want them to go!

For one of my little pages I went from this (which was functionally worthless)…

To this which is sending people to… wait for it… my Glamorously Vintage Instagram which I am trying to grow anyways… drops the mike!!! see my banner in person, Glamorously Vintage on Facebook

To Do: Think of something you want to focus on with your social media marketing efforts on Facebook. Make a banner with a call to action and the click it and add a description with a link! Canva is great for this or if you are not graphic designer-y you can do a quick Fiverr gig for $5 bucks and get it done in days! (#ad)

Social Media Brand Strategy Wrapup

Okay, that is 5 solid things you can do today to make your social media accounts more effective for your small business. A bunch of it is about branding strategy, but there are also some serious lead generation techniques that will help grow your business!

Hit me up on Facebook or Instagram if you make a new banner and I will for sure be your very first like!

]]><p>Social media can be super effective as a marketing tool, but we aren&#8217;t always so up to date with all the parts of our empire! 5 super solid, practial tips for growing you social media brand. This one is for small business owners who are not spending all day in social, but who want to...</p>
<p><a class="more-link" href="https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/05/marketing-ideas-5-things-check-on/">Read More &#187;</a></p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/05/marketing-ideas-5-things-check-on/">5 Tips To Help Your Brand Strategy &#8230; Small Business Social Media Marketing</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com">Marketing Artfully</a>.</p>https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/05/marketing-ideas-5-things-check-on/Managing Your Business Guilthttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarketingArtfully/~3/4Mu8rFDGgQ4/Time Managementgoal settingmindsetTara JacobsenSat, 02 Dec 2017 05:21:38 PSThttps://marketingartfully.com/?p=13721

Maybe there are some happy-go-lucky entrepreneurs who do not feel overwhelming guilt and shame for at least a part of each day in their business, but I haven’t talked to them yet. Owning a small business means that you are the final word, the final line of defense against chaos and madness all around you.

Whether you are managing a team or working alone, there are many moving part to your business, and I have found that most of us spend a good part of our day feeling guilty about something or other!

Here are some things that come to mind….

You are spending too much time working

You are spending too little time working

You didn’t finish that project you promised to get done

Someone emailed you and you didn’t get back to them

Someone asked you to help them and now you are dodging their calls

You should be working on something but are checking Facebook instead

You took a class and they said you should be posting, tweeting, videoing and sharing all the time… but you don’t

Your accounting is not up-to-date (it is December and you are on February)

You need to hire a new person but the thought of training them makes you sad

You are hanging with your boyfriend instead of working

ALL of these have come up to me during the last month of talking to business owners! It seems that no matter how much or how little we are working, there is some measure of guilt all the time.

So how do we fix it?

5 Things You Can Do To Start Feeling Less Business Guilt

1. Taking Time Off

I see funny little memes all the time from my Realtor friends who are saying that they were going to take time off, but they got a call so they are heading out the door back to work. The memes are only funny because they are true. Realtors are the WORST at taking time off, but so are many others of my peeps.

There is a saying, “Never off, never on”. If you never take time to charge your batteries, you cannot be performing at the top of your game!

To Do: Put all the things you have to do in your weekly calendar.

Kids, appointments, meetings. Then put in some personal time off. I don’t mean when you are going to an all day volleyball tournament for your kid, I mean YOU TIME. Even if it is an hour to start, carve out some me time. Now stop… and put in BUSINESS time off. You determine how much, but I for sure do better when I have at least a half a day when I have SCHEDULED dinking around. I could spend that time shopping for my vintage store, going to Starbucks and planning or even taking a course so I can learn something new. Don’t apologize to anyone (including yourself) for this time and treat it as importantly as you would a meeting with your best client!

2. Setting Realistic Goals

I am FAMOUS for wanting to do all the things but that is a recipe for guilt disaster! No one could ever do all the things that they would want in their business so you have figure out what is realistic to physically accomplish in the time you have.

I KNOW Grant Cardone says to 10X everything and I am a fan of that for sure! But you can’t 10X your media kit, product pictures, Pinterest, Instagram, blog, email, videos, etc. all at once. Yes, that is my list things that I am wanting to fix in my business but KNOW that I have work on one or two at a time, not all of them at once or none will really get better.

To Do: Pick two or three things each month to focus on.

My mastermind partner, Kirsten, and I meet each month. We talk about our 1 year goals and then pick two or three things to focus in the coming month that moves us towards one of those goals.

This month my goals are to 1) write a blog post a day, 2) take a picture a day and 3) start collecting content for an upcoming ebook. That is it.

Does that mean I don’t have to do other things, heck no, but the only things I HAVE to do for my business to be successful this month are those three things. I am not allowed to feel guilt if I don’t fix my email list or don’t do Tailwind every day… they are not one of the three things!

3. Setting Realistic External Expectations

Some of my peeps are super sad if they don’t answer every customer question in under an hour, have email inbox 0, respond to every mention on Facebook, answer every phone call (even while driving), etc.

Part of this problem is how you have structured your business and what kinds of expectations you have set for your customers or clients. As a business owner you do not have to work 24/7 so that means from time to time you will not be able to get back to people as quickly as you might like, but that is okay if they know the “rules”.

My customers know that they can send me things to do all week, but I am only going to work on them on Monday. That is the day I do client work. Does that make them sad, maybe a little bit but it makes them sadder when I say I will do something and don’t get it done because my week was already crazy busy and I couldn’t get it squeezed in anyways. AND I don’t have to have daily guilt about not doing the work!

To Do: Set up systems and let your peeps know.

You can do this same kind of thing. Put in your shop policies or on your Contact Us page that you answer most enquiries by the next business day. This eliminates some of those weird, they called at 8PM on Friday night and you are feeling guilty all weekend. The next business day is Monday so they should not expect a call back before then.

Use anything at your disposal to make this easier! Put an autoresponder on your email reiterating that you will get back with them by the next business day (or within 24 hours if you insist). Use auto-fill messages that you can save and “respond” by letting them know they will get a “real” answer in a wee bit.

A cool suggestion that I heard a while ago was to have an “emergency text” message that says…. “If this is a business emergency I can be reached through my husband’s/wife’s cell phone. Text your problem to 555-1212 and I will get back to you as soon as possible.” Something that seemed super important gets less urgent when they realize they will have to “bother” your loved ones to get to you.

4. Start Doing Only What You Love

This one is REALLY weird and gets me at least a couple of time a year. I LOVE writing blog posts but sometimes feel like I am pushing that to the end of the list of things that I “have/get” to do today.

For a while there I had all kinds of excuses that I didn’t have time write blog posts because I had client work or had to list some products or I had to check Facebook. But none of that makes me as happy as writing blog posts and blog posts are how I find new customers and make money…sigh.

To Do: Figure out three things you love doing in your business and make them a guilt free priority.

I know a writer who DOES love Facebook and gets a lot of opportunities from talking to people there. Her time is not wasted spent there so she could put that on her list of three main things for her business. For her it is NOT goofing off and should be on her list of “must dos”.

If you are a product seller, doing research of the market and product development should be a focus, you cannot feel guilt if you are cruising around the internet checking trends and looking for inspiration!

Guilt goes away when you have stated your favorite things and have a rock solid plan for how to do them effectively!

5. Stop Saying Yes To Everyone Else

There are a million responsibilities and cool things you can take on that are actually someone else’s priorities. I get emails every day of people who would like to connect and have me share their new software or work on their projects, but I HAVE to guard my time religiously!

Once you know your goals and expectations you can be super clear about what you should say yes to and what you can politely decline.

For example, yesterday 1) a really nice lady invited me to go to a marketing training in Tampa next Wednesday night and 2) another friend invited me to be on her podcast for writers. Leaving my home and going to Tampa doesn’t make me happy and since I wouldn’t be presenting doesn’t offer that much opportunity to my business. Talking to my other friend for 30 minutes from the comfort of my office to writers (who are one of my niches) is a good opportunity for me.

To Do: REALLY look at what other people are asking you to do for/with them and see if it will make you happy or improve your business.

Stopping saying yes doesn’t mean NEVER saying yes, it just means that you have to be thoughtful about what you say yes to!

I KNOW there is real guilt when you tell someone no, you can’t help them, but there is even more guilt when you are “wasting time” helping someone else grow their business instead of focusing on your own!

It feels really selfish to make yourself a priority, but you only get one shot at this life so make sure you are spending it doing things that are important to you!

Final Thoughts About Business Guilt

It is really easy to spiral into business guilt ALL THE TIME. If you are reading this you probably are feeling at least a little bit guilt about something or other.

One thing that I have found helps is to write down what you are feeling guilty about or say it out loud to someone else. When you get it out of your head and into the world sometimes it looks worse and sometimes it looks silly.

If it sounds silly saying you feel guilty, then just stop!

If it sounds worse saying it out loud then make a plan about how to fix whatever you are feeling guilty about.

And remember, it is just business! The world will go on and what feels so horrible today will be just a blip on the grand scheme of your life!

]]><p>Maybe there are some happy-go-lucky entrepreneurs who do not feel overwhelming guilt and shame for at least a part of each day in their business, but I haven&#8217;t talked to them yet. Owning a small business means that you are the final word, the final line of defense against chaos and madness all around you....</p>
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/02/managing-your-business-guilt/">Managing Your Business Guilt</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com">Marketing Artfully</a>.</p>https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/02/managing-your-business-guilt/4 Specific Tips To Help An Experienced Etsy Seller With Her SEOhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarketingArtfully/~3/i5Twm7j8k-g/etsy marketingetsy seoTara JacobsenFri, 01 Dec 2017 05:13:20 PSThttps://marketingartfully.com/?p=13740

Experienced Etsy sellers are mad! They have been selling on Etsy for a long time and many of them are saying that their sales are down and that they are just doing what they have been for years with worse results….sigh.

It is a fair gripe for sure, it seems like if you have been around a long time, you should be able to have some benefits or at least not be pushed down in favor of new shops (one of the rumors going around).

That said, one of the biggest problems is the increased competition from new shops, products and even countries that can now sell who couldn’t years ago.

So today I am going to help an experienced Etsy seller take a new look at her Etsy SEO and see if I can make some suggestions that might help get some of her sales back!

Livia’s Reach Out For Help

I belong to an Etsy group on Facebook, Etsy Sellers Only, and a gal there put out this plea today…

Need major help. Etsy has been my main source of income for 4 years. My shop was a 6 figure a year shop that has spiraled downhill drastically despite setting the highest amount for promoted listing ads & Google Ads, adding more listings, having a 5 star feedback rating, & responding to all of my conversations in a timely manner. I have an A on most of my listings on Etsy Rank & I’m completely stunned. This is seriously my last resort to post this as I’ve always been able to figure out how to jumpstart my shop when it’s performing less than my standards, but nothing is working. I’m looking for experienced Etsy Sellers advice please! What is going on with Etsy??

She has been busting her butt, not just sitting around boo-hooing so I asked her if I could write a post to help and she said YES!

1. Too Many of The Same Words

So here is the listing that I am going to review for Livia. It has great pictures and has been a best seller for her so now we just need to get it back in action!

Okay so let’s break down how many keywords Livia is actually targeting with this listing…

One Year Old Girl

Birthday Outfit

Personalized Girl

First

1st Birthday

Shirt

Pink

If we take out all the duplicate ways she said the same things, she really has very few keywords she is targeting and if we get them all together that leaves A LOT of room for more keywords! YAY!

2. Research, Research, Research

Since these are going to be some Livia’s main keywords I would do a wee bit of research to make sure we have them in the right order of importance to search… like every other search engine, Etsy search reads from left to right!

So let’s check and see how some of these phrases rank for search volume! I like to use Marmalead because I can pull keywords fast and compare them side by side (#promo)

Based on the handy-dandy color chart I see why many Etsy sellers pick to use “one year old” as their main keyword because it has high engagement and moderate competition, BUT if you look below that there are lower average views and lower average favs a week. But for now let’s go with that and say that “One Year Old” is going to be first keyword for this listing.

So we have “One Year Old Girl Birthday Outfit” to start with! YAY!

Doing the dropdown search in Etsy we see that indeed, “one year old girl birthday outfit” is the first suggested search…

But so is gift, shirt and a wildcard (so interesting… winter!) since I am doing this in November winter makes sense, but I bet in June summer shows up… hmmm something to think about here!

But being a business woman, I am seriously interested in the fact that the “1st birthday” average pricing is so much higher than either of the other two…

Nothing to explain it in search, but damn, I am for sure going to try to get ranked for that one next! So now we have …

Including the Liv & Co. TM bits that leaves us with 35 more characters to work with because we eliminated all the duplicates!

a few years ago Etsy gave weight to having the same keyword phrase in there multiple times but that is not the case anymore, those are just wasted characters

3. Silos of Search

This is what Livia said about her products…

I mean, let’s think about it, I make baby clothes. So what are people searching for? They are searching for “baby boy clothes”, “baby girl clothes”, “newborn girl outfit”, “baby shower gift for a girl”, “newborn coming home outfit”, “baby hospital outfit”, “baby shirt”, “funny baby clothing”, etc. Then you have the phrases where Etsy will automatically start adding words for you when you’re searching, so you put some of those in, like, “baby clothes girl”, “newborn gift girl”.

First off, she has a lot more diversity in those words than she had in this listing and second, it is SO FREAKING HARD to find our own keywords.

So the next thing I did was look at her promoted listings and those keywords matched what she is already trying to rank for because her category is competitive. Sometimes I can find cool outliers in there because I sell niche or vintage items.

An old Google SEO term is “silos of keywords” meaning that all of her words are right in that one channel of words… 1st birthday outfit…. now that we have the base keywords that match her product, we need to open up other silos so she can rank for more diverse words!

Features Versus Benefits

Features of the product list exactly what they are… it is factually correct that this product is a 1st birthday outfit and we have covered that in the first part of her title. Now we want to get freaky and see what other kinds of keywords we might be able to find!

Livia will want to think about who her customers are! Do just mom’s buy these or do they sell to aunties and grandmas (most etsy shoppers are women so we are going to focus there).

With features and benefits she wants to think about “so that…”

Her shopper wants to buy a beautiful birthday outfit “so that”…

her sister thinks she is the best gift giver ever

she has the cutest baby pictures

her baby looks awesome at daycare

she can take cool instagram photos (just me?)

Livia will be much better at this game because she knows her customers but I think we could safely add…

Gifts For Niece… this just in, I spoke with Livia and she says NOT grandmas so we got a few spaces back!

Here is data that she has because she is an experienced seller:

My target audience is between 24 – 35 years old. Not to say that there aren’t others, but across all my social media stats and analytics, that age range is the range of people following me and interested in my products.

Adjectives and Nouns

Although Livia did have pink she didn’t have any of the kinds of things that people might search for like “heart, gold, bow, socks, headband”

In the benefits part I also found “cool, cute, best” and I could add “sparkly, modern, feminine, pretty”.

and possible tags… I want the first ones that are the real item to be exact search phrases, the rest I just want to get as many keywords in there so she has a CHANCE to get found in search!

Because Etsy ONLY uses tags and titles as keywords, Livia would be invisible if she doesn’t put some of those other keywords in there too.

Holy smokes we are cruising here and have WAY more than we could ever use in one listings… which leads me to…

4. Mix of Listings

I added 12+ new keywords that Livia could rank for on just this one listing, dinking around for about an hour while writing this post! Imagine if she did this for multiple listings in her store, targeting different top level keywords each time. So a listing with each of these keywords as the main (first) keyword…

One Year Old Birthday Outfit

1st Birthday Outfit Baby Girl

Pink and Gold Baby Girl Birthday

Personalized Birthday Girl Outfit

I think you get the picture! She could add or subtract included pieces to get to different price points and so they are not duplicate listings. She could SEO the pink one for “One Year Old” and the blue one for “1st Birthday”. There are a million different ways to get different listings to rank for different keywords because let’s face it…

Yes, we want to get them to our listing, but then once they are in our store they will be clicking around and finding something that they are dying to have or favorite at the least!

Etsy SEO is simply to get them into your store, once they are there things like great pictures, cool outfits and interesting descriptions will get them to buy!

]]><p>Experienced Etsy sellers are mad! They have been selling on Etsy for a long time and many of them are saying that their sales are down and that they are just doing what they have been for years with worse results&#8230;.sigh. It is a fair gripe for sure, it seems like if you have been...</p>
<p><a class="more-link" href="https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/01/4-tips-experienced-etsy-seller/">Read More &#187;</a></p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/01/4-tips-experienced-etsy-seller/">4 Specific Tips To Help An Experienced Etsy Seller With Her SEO</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://marketingartfully.com">Marketing Artfully</a>.</p>https://marketingartfully.com/2017/12/01/4-tips-experienced-etsy-seller/8 Steps To Finding Your Focus When You Like All The Thingshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarketingArtfully/~3/iQm4Eup0Hj0/mindsetTime Managementgoal settingself helpTara JacobsenTue, 28 Nov 2017 09:06:44 PSThttps://marketingartfully.com/?p=13732

A few years ago I hired a super high priced coach to help my business grow. He is a world renowned marketing person and a stand up human being and I thought that if he would just tell me what to do I would FINALLY be able to focus and make the big bucks.

He looked around all the different parts of my business in horror and said that I had way to many moving parts. That I would HAVE to scale things down to one thing and focus on that forever. Because of what I had going at the time, he picked real estate marketing. I had written a few books about this topic, ranked well in Google and had been a Realtor in a past life so I was knowledgable.

And I like real estate marketing… well enough, I guess.

I had spent a fair bit of time trying to make them courses and books and training. And they were doing okay, but they didn’t set my heart on fire at all.

The thought of focusing on them, only, for the rest of my life was the most depressing thing I had heard in a long time, but “the man” said that would work.

The Rebellion Phase

So I spent a while trying to do just that and feeling more resentful and depressed by the day. I didn’t want to learn anything new because I would just have to figure out how to make it apply to real estate agents (again).

The worst part of all of this is that my special gift from God is to figure out other people’s businesses! I have helped hundreds of small business owners find focus, but I was floundering myself. I knew I loved marketing and writing, but there didn’t seem to be a clear path.

So I decided to do something that no self respecting marketer would ever do… open an Etsy store selling jewelry I made with my two little hands (funny thing, I HATE making jewelry!)

But I figured out I did love Etsy and the ladies who sell there (a few men too!)

So I shut down my jewelry store and opened a digital products store (way more in line with what I do in real life). I just crossed the 2,000 sales mark and it is super easy for me!

Ha! I showed those big time, serious marketers a thing or two, didn’t I.

But then I had the bug. I love old things and thought it would be super cool to sell a physical product too so I opened up another store selling vintage. That one is doing great too!

What Did I Learn?

I have sold more Etsy related marketing products, courses and coaching in the last 3 years than I have sold real estate training in 11 years.

There are SO many things I can learn and teach about… product photography, selling digital products, selling physical goods, sourcing, etc. There are so many interesting things that I have a whole new set of mess (but I am LOVING it!)

With all this cool new stuff I had to make sure that I did have FOCUS and that it wasn’t just a blob of nothing again.

If you have ALL THE THINGS and want to get a wee bit more straight, here are my top tips!

How Can You Find Your Focus?

My story is great but if YOU don’t DO something after reading it, then it is just a great tale. Here are some things you can do starting today!

1. Keep looking until you find something you love

I was mad at the coach man for a long time. Why the hell didn’t he tell me about how much I would love sales when I had something cool to sell…. oh wait, that’s right, I didn’t know about it then!

When you are trying to “find your passion” there are a million ways to screw it up. I thought because I knew I loved marketing that would solve all my problems, but that wasn’t specific enough.

It is easy to think that the thing you love will already be in your life, but you might not have even met it yet.

> Exercise: Write down everything you find interesting for a week. For me a wee bit of the list would look like this this week:

Instagram… do different pictures work better

Instagram…. how to do promoted posts

Pinterest…is the Tribes working

Making pictures… do colors matter, illustrations or photos

What should I write about for my month of blogging in December

Affiliate marketing… should I do a lot or a few

Videos… YouTube, live, what the heck are stories?

Mine all start with marketing because that IS my passion and then branch off into parts of it I like.

By doing this you will discover things that you are curious about, things you already do you would like to learn more about and what interests you on a day to day basis.

2. Try all the things, you never know which will work

So here is the key, you won’t know what you love until you find it! And you will never find focus until you love something… deep huh?

Earlier this year I was suffering a bit with depression (a lifelong battle) and I decided to take a course from Dr. Axe on Essential Oils. I wanted to learn how to use the scents to help me feel better and that led me to starting a new, fun website that I am working on now.

Will this be something that changes my business life? I dunno! I started the Etsy stores as a hobby and they turned into a real part of my business.

Stop trying to judge yourself before you get started!

> Exercise: What is one thing that you have been interested in that isn’t practical? Take a course, read some blog posts, watch some YouTubes about it!

3. Try some things twice! (or even three times)

I have been curious all my life and willing to try new things…yay! But they don’t always work out…boo!

For example, years ago I thought I would want to decoupage bottles and spent a good two months getting ready, buying supplies, etc. only to find I HATED doing that. But this year I decided to do a big boxes project with custom designed tissue paper and… wait for it… decoupage! I loved it this time.

The reason it made more sense this time was that I MADE the designs rather than just chopping up pieces of paper. More about what I like to do later!

I also have tried photography a bunch over the years (my husband and mother-in-law are “real” photographers) but generally hated taking pictures of landscapes. But then I figured out photography could be for products and now I am in love again!

> Exercise: What is one thing that you thought you would love but then gave up? Can you make it match something you are working on today?

4. Don’t judge yourself

I am sticking this in the middle here because you might be FREAKING out right about now. There are either so many things you love or so few things you think will work. There are things you have tried and failed at and things that you are just…not….qualified to do.

There is no one on the earth who thinks as badly about your failures as you do. There is no one who says meaner things to you than that little voice in your head who is super ready to throw you under the bus for wanting to try something new.

There is no greater fear than trying something and then failing… again.

Don’t beat yourself up, just do all this very lightly and flail around until you find your passions.

> Exercise: No cheating on this one! You have to give yourself a break. No judging you during this time of finding your focus.

5. Pick three things you love to do

Okay, this is one I do every couple of weeks to figure out what I should functionally be doing in my business. I write down ONLY the top three things I like to do.

Mine are…

Making pretty pictures (graphic design and taking them)

Writing (mostly blog posts, sometimes books)

Making videos (secretly being bossy and telling people what to do)

Then I look at my week and see how much of it is spent doing what I like to do. When I first started doing this practice I was doing very little of that, now the majority of my weeks are this and the things I don’t love doing have to hang out on the edges!

> Exercise: Write down three things you love to do. My pal Kirsten’s are texting people, working out and sales, yours can be anything you like the most.

6. If you haven’t found your passion yet, it is okay

I was 47 years old when I started my first Etsy store. I had been doing marketing for 14 years at that point and doing the real estate marketing for 8 years.

I thought I had all the things that I needed to be successful, I just wasn’t doing it right. Come to find out, I hadn’t found what I liked the most yet.

Over the last three years my life has grown immensely. My interests have blossomed even more. I jump out of bed in the morning because I can’t sleep with all the cool ideas I have to write down. And I am happy.

But you may not know yet and that might be making you unhappy. You may be me 3 1/2 years ago looking down the barrel of a life filled with something that was just okay.

Don’t give up! Just keep trying!

Another friend had tried doing affilate marketing and making websites. She was famous for jumping from thing to thing and then she took a job with a non-profit. Wait, what? She figured out that she didn’t like being an entrepreneur, she likes using all those skills she has to help people in a different way.

Your path and passion don’t have to match anyone else’s expectations of you… you do you!

7. Don’t worry about being “flakey”

One thing that was holding me back from trying something else new what the fear that “people” would think I was flakey. I had done a bunch of different things and now I was going to add being an Etsy store owner to it? And start talking about product photography? And digital products?

What the actual heck! I was going to look like I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to be when I grew up.

And I am sure some people decided that I wasn’t for them. But I found a whole new tribe of people who are creative and fun and interesting. Now, many of real estate agent friends are fun, but they are not especially creative nor do they sell products (except houses).

> Exercise: Think about the worst thing that could happen if you try something new. Would all your current customers leave? Would your contracts all fall apart? Would you be branded a loser? Or would you maybe find out what you love doing and be a huge success in a few years…. something to think about.

8. All the stuff you learned still works

One last thing about this and then we will talk more about your focus…

All the stuff you have been doing up until now is not wasted time. Maybe you have been growing an Instagram following or an email list. Maybe you have a website or a store and you know how to do ecommerce.

One of the reasons I was able to launch my new side hustle on Etsy was that I already had people who loved me, even though they might not love Etsy. I made forms for coaches and authors and yes, even real estate agents. I used all the skills I had learned over the years to make my new business parts work faster.

Please do not think everything you have done up until now is a waste.

Everything you have done until now has given you skills that you can use as you take your next steps.

Finding Focus

Okay, you may be thinking this was a whole bait and switch article and I would NEVER get to the focus part, but this is the thing. I never found focus until I found something I loved to do.

Now that I have passions, I can focus on each part of my business empire for weeks or even months at a time. I can cut out things that do not fit into MY version of a perfect business and say no to a lot more things that I could before.

It is impossible to “find focus” … focus is what happens when you are so excited about what you are working on that you live and breathe it. When you are taking notes and learning and excited to launch new products or services.

When you find your “thing” focus follows.

Finding Your Focus Resources

As I was writing this, I was thinking about all the people who have helped me along the way. Here are a few resources that might help you with finding your focus…

]]><p>A few years ago I hired a super high priced coach to help my business grow. He is a world renowned marketing person and a stand up human being and I thought that if he would just tell me what to do I would FINALLY be able to focus and make the big bucks. He...</p>
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